EMMA BELL H
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FOX SPARROW
Length 7*4 inches
OUK SOUTHERN
BIRDS
EMMA BELL MILES
ILLUSTRATED BY THE AUTHOR
NATIONAL BOOK COMPANY
CHATTANOOGA, TENN. CHICAGO, ILL.
DALLAS, TEXAS
Copyrighted 1919
by
National Book Company
©CI.A5L2175
JAN 20 1919
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BIRD STUDY
An Introduction
While the scientific study of birds is beyond most of
us, yet an intimate understanding of them and their
ways is within reach of everyone, and may enrich life
with a new depth of interest. No line of study opens a
more fascinating vista to the mind which wants to know,
in the best and truest sense, in what kind of world we are
living.
Most nature study books are written for the latitude
of New England. While the sub-tropical natural life
of Florida has received considerable attention, it is a
strange fact that for all its valuable and richly various
fauna and flora the Middle Southern States have had
few naturalists. The non-scientific student, in search of
a popular work that will help him to some knowledge
of birds in this section, is at a loss what to read. It is
to help meet this need that the present volume has been
written.
Blank pages are provided for the recording of indi-
vidual observations. With the exception of those few
species which nest near our homes, comparatively little
is known of the daily life and actions of birds.
Go out alone in early morning, keep the sun at your
back, be careful to do nothing that will startle these timid
creatures, and see what you will see. Remember that
you are dealing with the most sensitively organized of
animals. Stand or sit quietly watching them; do not
touch nest or eggs, as many species have so keen a scent
4 OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
that they will not return to a nest which has been in
contact with a hand.
Naturalists like John Burroughs are often said to
possess some mysterious secret of attracting birds, or at
least of dealing with them at close range. The secret is
simply the avoidance of sudden movements. By keeping
quiet you may induce such friendly birds as "Wrens,
Chippies, and Titmice to perch on your arms and head
and to eat from your hand.
Experience is the only real teacher in this study.
Patience and practice render the identification of birds
easy. There is as much character in the voice and actions
of a bird as there is in those of most people ; and we
learn to recognize bird friends as readily as human ones,
as they become familiar. Their rudimentary language,
too, is easily learned; so that when one is accustomed
to the vocal range of a pair it is easy to tell whether they
are expressing alarm at the presence of an enemy, satis-
faction over the fledglings in the nest, or triumph over
the capture of food ; whether they are quarreling, making
love, or conducting an ordinary business conversation.
It should be kept in mind, however, that very careful
observation is necessary before deciding on the identity
of any bird not well and familiarly known to you.
"When you come upon a new bird, therefore, try to
describe it about as follows :
About what size ? Compare with some familiar type
as Crow, Robin, or Sparrow, or state length in inches.
Describe bright colors or marks, if any.
Shape and color of bill — a bird's most characteristic
feature.
INTRODUCTION 5
Marks — wing bars, eye ring, line through or over
eye, white feathers in tail, etc.
Notes and song — short or continuous ; loud or low,
etc.
Is it on the ground or in trees ? in thicket, grass, or
in the open?
Does it walk or hop ?
What is it eating?
Is it alone, or in flocks, or with birds of other species ?
About how many in a flock or group ?
Where is it — in swamp, pasture, or woods, in the
air, or by running water ?
All notes should be dated. Having identified the
bird, the next thing is to study its habits and peculiari-
ties. A note book and pencil should be carried in the
pocket for the immediate fixing of one's impressions.
Immediate, because our memories are treacherous, and
fifteen minutes' delay may give rise to errors in notes or
markings, or confusion of two or more species seen at
the same time. Afterward these notes may be entered
in the blank pages of this book.
A bare list of the birds found in your neighborhood,
with dates, is well worth making. It is most interesting
to make a special study of one bird at a time, filling the
pages with little family histories. In March or April,
watch the actions of some mated pair, and find out all
you can about their home life. Some leading questions
in this line of study might be :
Where was the nest built? When begun? When
completed ? Of what is it made ?
Did the male bird or the female build it, or both ?
6 OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
When was the first egg laid ? the last ?
Do both birds or only one incubate the eggs?
How long before hatching?
What food is brought to the young?
How long do they remain in the nest? Do they
return to it after once leaving ?
How long are they fed before seeking their own
living ?
Do they remain with the parents until migration?
The changes in plumage brought about by the juvenal
and yearly molts are a puzzling factor in identification
of birds, and one that makes the study of migration diffi-
cult for the beginner. But the date of arrival in spring,
and whether the birds come in flocks, pairs, or singly, or
whether the males and females arrive in separate bands,
are interesting points and easily noted.
If the blank pages be filled out with these and similar
data carefully made, the completed book will be valued
for generations.
CONTENTS
Birds of the Year Round
PAGE
Junco 11
White-breasted Nuthatch.. 13
Red-breasted Nuthatch — 14
Brown-headed Nuthatch... 15
Tufted Titmouse 16
Carolina Chickadee 18
Carolina Wren 21
Bewick's Wren 22
Housewren 23
Marsh Wren 24
Cardinal 24
Crow 27
Raven 31
Downy Woodpecker 32
Hairy Woodpecker (Sap-
sucker) 33
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker . . 35
Red-headed Woodpecker. . 35
Red-bellied Woodpecker. . . 37
Red-cockaded Woodpecker 37
Ivory-billed Woodpecker.. 37
Pileated Woodpecker 38
Flicker 40
Screech Owl 41
Barn Owl 44
PAGE
Great Horned Owl 45
Kingfisher 45
Wild Turkey 48
Ruffed Grouse 50
Bob-White 52
Field Sparrow 54
Henslow's Sparrow 56
Pinewoods Sparrow 56
Seaside Sparrow 57
Sharptailed Sparrow 58
English Sparrow 59
Carolina. Dove (Mourning
Dove) 61
Ground Dove 65
Gold Finch 65
Robin 68
Bluejay 71
Meadowlark 73
Loggerhead Shrike
(Butcher Bird) 75
Bluebird 78
Towhee 80
Purple Grackle 81
Turkey Buzzard 82
Sparrow Hawk 85
Winter Visitors
Brown Creeper 88
Pine Finch or Siskin 89
Crossbill 90
Whitethroat Sparrow 91
Seng Sparrow 94
Savannah Sparrow 96
8
OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
PAGE
Swamp Sparrow 97
Grasshopper Sparrow 98
Marsh Sparrow... 98
Golden-crowned Kinglet... 98
PAGE
Ruby-crowned Kinglet 99
Waxwing 99
Hermit Thrush 101
Summer Migrants
PAGE
Scarlet Tanager 103
Summer Tanager 104
Phoebe 105
Wood Pewee ,. 107
Crested Flycatcher 107
Acadian Flycatcher 107
Red-eyed Vireo 108
Yellow-throated Vireo 110
Mountain Solitary Vireo. . 110
White-eyed Vireo Ill
Bobolink :....... Ill
Cowbird 113
Mocking Bird 114
Wood Thrush 118
Veery 120
Olive-backed Thrush. 121
Brown Thrasher 121
Catbird 124
Indigo Bunting 127
Chimney Swift 128
Ruby-throated Humming
Bird 130
Whippoorwill 132
ChuckwilPs Widow 133
Nighthawk 135
Redwinged Blackbird 136
Purple Martin 138
Barn Swallow 139
Bank Swallow 139
PAGE
Kingbird 139
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher ... 141
Orchard Oriole 142
Baltimore Oriole 142
Yellow-billed Cuckoo
(Raincrow) 143
Black-billed Cuckoo 144
Chipping Sparrow 147
Yellow-breasted Chat 149
Yellow Warbler 151
Palm Warbler .152
Prairie Warbler 152
Black and White Creeping
Warbler 153
Hooded Warbler 155
Tennessee Warbler 155
Nashville Warbler 156
Worm-eating Warbler 157
Maryland Yellow Throat.. 157
Parula Warbler 158
Blaekburnian Warbler 159
Black-throated Green
Warbler 159
Blue-winged Warbler 159
Golden-winged Warbler... 159
Bachman's Warbler 159
Louisiana Water Thrush.. 159
Prothonotary Warbler 160
Swainson's Warbler 161
CONTENTS
PAGE
Yellow-throated Warbler.. 162
Sycamore Warbler 162
Ovenbird 162
Cairn's Warbler 163
Chestnut-sided Warbler. . . 164
PAGE
Kentucky Warbler 165
Pine Warbler 167
Myrtle Warbler 167
Yellow Palm Warbler 167
Shadows of the Past
Carolina Paroquet 169 Passenger Pigeon.
170
jBird, M a P
"Tail
Shoolclc*-
Crown
Lore
Beak
OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
BIRDS OF THE YEAR ROUND
snow-
JUNCO
These are the "snowbirds" we all know so
well, colored like "stormy sky above:
covered earth below," as
has been prettily said of
them. A flock, appearing
suddenly in a field or
dooryard, may cover the
ground for a time with
little moving gray forms,
busily picking and peck-
ing for grass and weed
seeds, then suddenly be
gone. They are very
sociable, quick to benefit
by a handful of finely
crumbled cornbread
thrown onto the bare
ground or a doorstep
swept clean of snow, and will sit in the shrubbery
of the lawn looking so plump and contented that
we are glad to have them as guests.
11
JUNCO
Length 6*4 inches
12 OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
The Junco's beak is like that of the Field
Sparrow, broad and pinkish. There are two
white feathers in the tail which form a bright V
as the bird flits before yon into the nnderbrnsh.
Many other small winter birds consort with
Juncos in the friendliest way; yon may see them
with Wrens, Song-sparrows, Titmice, Golden-
crowned Kinglets, and Blnebirds, with perhaps
a Nuthatch or a Downy Woodpecker, feeding all
together in your dooryard, if you will take pains
to spread a meal for them and keep cats at a
distance. When you have finished with your
walnuts, hickory nuts, or pecans, if you will
throw the hulls out on the ground instead of
burning them, you will find that all these birds
and also the Cardinal will enjoy the waste bits
of kernel which their sharp beaks can pick out.
All winter long the Juncos are among our
most plentiful and familiar birds; but with the
warmth of March's sprouting days they "begin
to drift northward, to nest in Canada and the
extreme northern states, and we see no more
of them until next October. But there is in
the higher ranges of the southern Alleghenies a
Carolina Junco, somewhat larger than the snow-
bird and gray all over, who remains a resident
through the year. If you go to the mountains
for the summer, perhaps you will see him among
the rhododendron.
WHITE-BREASTED NUTHATCH 13
"Little snowbird in the tree," we used to
sing when I was in the First Grade ; but the tree
is not the place in which to look for Juncos.
Not so energetic as the Titmouse nor so lively
as the Wrens, not so prettily colored as the
Kinglet, nor so acrobatic as the Chickadee, these
plump, quiet little fellows are as welcome winter
companions as any that habitually come around
our homes. Their pleasant twitter and chirp is
never an obtrusive sound, and their clear brown
eyes have always an expression of innocent
friendliness, nearly like that of Doves.
WHITE-BREASTED NUTHATCH
"Yank-yank! yank-yank!" Here he comes,
head downward as usual, looking all over the
bark with his sharp eyes, pecking into crevices
with his sharp beak. Round and round the tree
he goes, circling some of the larger limbs, easily
taking all the attitudes of a fly on the ceiling.
What a neatly tailored appearance he makes in
his slate-gray close-fitting suit, with its pearly
vest and black markings, cut so squarely short
across the tail.
The name of Nuthatch means that he will
wedge small nuts, such as beechnuts or chestnuts,
or large seeds like those of the sunflower, into
cracks in the bark, and hammer away at them
till he splits them open — a clever trick which
14
OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
few other birds seem to have learned. He is
also called Devil Downhead and other odd names
in reference to his upside-down way of searching
for insect food.
He is not at all shy, and
will come to the very door-
step to eat cornbread-crambs
and grain. In winter he may
even venture into the resi-
dence districts of towns,
where he runs over the trees
in lawns and yards ; but with
the approach of warm
weather he becomes less fa-
miliar, and is not often seen
after the beginning of the
nesting season. His home is
hard to find; it is tucked
away in a hollow limb, soft-
ened with dead leaves and
lined with feathers.
The Eed - breasted Nut-
hatch is one of our winter
visitors, but goes north with
the coming of warm days.
The little Brown-headed Nuthatch is a feature
of the great Southern pinewoods. He gathers
his food chiefly among the smaller branches, but
carries it to the main trunk and wedges it firmly
WHITE-BREASTED
NUTHATCH
Length 6 inches
BROWN-HEADED NUTHATCH
15
between the scales of pine bark, to be eaten at
his leisure. The nest is made of grasses and
lined softly with feathers, generally placed near
the ground in a hole in a tree or stump. With
the coming of spring, even so early as the first
warm days of March, five or six pretty spotted
eggs are laid.
All these Nut-
hatches are surpris-
ing cortortionists.
Owing to his fear-
lessness and to the
conspicuous clearness
of his markings, the
White - breasted
is easiest to observe.
You may see him
during the winter in
the suburbs of south-
ern towns, and no bird's movements are more
interesting to watch than his reversals, Sittings,
and gyrations. His compact little body seems to
be fitted with some kind of universal joint which
enables him to take positions which would be
impossible to any other bird. He is not sociably
inclined; but if you will follow his softly nasal
cry of "yank-yank, yank, yank," through the
woods you will often find Chickadees or a Tit-
mouse with him, apparently following him too.
BROWN-HEADED NUTHATCH
Length 4^4 inches
16
OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
TUFTED TITMOUSE
This vigorous little fellow makes up in con-
spicuous voice and action for the modest ashen
smoothness of his coloring. His rousing "peeto,
peeto, peeto" may be heard on any still winter
morning. He is full of pranks and quite intrepid,
so that curiosity often brings him into porches
and out-buildings where,
if not protected, he falls
an easy victim to the cat.
His nest is deep in
some abandoned Wood-
pecker's hole or hollow
limb, and soft with
crushed dry oak-galls of
last year, with sedge-
grass down, and hair
picked up around barns and stables, or even
pulled out of the backs of cows in the pasture.
One spring day I was lying on a cot out of
doors, when a Titmouse came into the porch
where I was and began to explore nooks and
crannies. I " froze," as it is well to do when a
bird comes near, and lay watching him as he
poked about the rungs of a chair and the cracks
of the balusters ; but what was my surprise when
he hopped up on my pillow and began to examine
my head! I dared not move; I heard his light
TUFTED TITMOUSE
Length 6 inches
TUFTED TITMOUSE 17
feet tapping all round my ears ; he tweaked once
or twice at my hair, chirped, and then actually
jumped on my head and with claw T s and beak
went to work in earnest!
This treatment was too vigorous for an
ordinary human scalp to endure long at one time,
but before I was obliged to drive him away he
called to his mate with incisive chirruping to
come and see what he had found. She soon
answered, and came tripping sidewise along a
drooping pine bough to within a few feet, but
would not venture closer. From the tone of her
replies I take it that she scarcely liked the looks
of the strange object on which he was standing.
"Why didn't you catch it?" at this point
inquires nearly every child to whom I tell this
story. But why should I have wished to catch
him? I could not have kept him; I couldn't pos-
sibly have made him happy, and he would have
been too frightened and miserable to make me
happy. Even if I had only held him a few sec-
onds and then set him free, he would never have
come back again.
As it was, he did come back in a day or two,
to find me sitting in a chair. Without hesitation
he climbed up my back and began on my head
as before, standing braced by his tail feathers
against my ear ^ and working away with loud
chirps of excitement.
18 OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
He seemed delighted with his discovery of
this source of hair; although he never carried
much away, he enjoyed playing with it. Since I
occupied the porch most of the time and warned
others not to frighten him, he returned again
and again to peck at one scalp or another, to
everybody's good pleasure. Thinking to oblige
him I fastened wisps and combings in convenient
crevices, but though he sometimes pulled at these
in passing he never took them away. Appar-
ently he preferred his goods in the original pack-
age. I noticed that while perched on some one's
head he seemed at times to be overcome with
surprise at realizing his unusual position, and
would look around at us with a startled expres-
sion, erecting his crest, which nearly caused us
all to burst out laughing. But I am glad to say
his confidence was never betrayed; his visits
continued until the building period was over,
when doubtless family cares claimed all his time
and attention.
CAROLINA CHICKADEE
Smaller and shyer than the Chickadee of New
England states, our Carolina thumbkin neverthe-
less brightens the winter landscape with busy,
capricious flutterings and constant chirping in
much the same way. His wing feathers are not
edged with white, and his "tsic-a-de-de-de-de"
CAROLINA CHICKADEE 19
is softer than that of the bird of Emerson's
poem ; but his courage in enduring cheerfully the
hardships of winter deserves all the praise that
has been pretty generally heaped on his northern
cousin.
His coat is all gray, with a black cap and
cravat. No bird is livelier or more agile than
this wee fellow, as he flits among the branches,
searching every twig for tiny insects and the
eggs and larvae of insects which larger birds
have overlooked, picking, pecking, boring, flut-
tering, standing upside down and peering into
chinks, squeaking "suippit, suippit," and from
time to time calling "tsic-a-de-de-de." Besides
this he has a spring song of four smooth whist-
ling notes of equal value, "I'm — here — to —
stay," and other chuckling or scolding notes. It
has been estimated that one of these tiny helpers
of ours consumes from two hundred to five hun-
dred small insects daily, or up to 4,000 eggs of
insects, and even more when the young Chicks
are to be fed.
The nest is a cosy affair, no bigger than the
hollow of your hand, tucked into a stump or an
empty woodpecker's hole. It cradles perhaps six
white eggs specked a little with brown.
It used to puzzle me that such tiny bodies
could contain enough warmth and vital energy
to defy cheerfully the fiercest weather. I believe,
20
OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
they are aided by their sociable way of cuddling
together, a number of them finding shelter in a
hollow limb. There they remain, fluffed out into
little gray puff-balls with toes hidden in their
feathers, no doubt holding each other's courage
up as w r ell as assisting each other to keep warm,
through storms and freezing nights and the long
imprisonment of sleet which is so trying to birds
of all kinds ; but with the first morning on which
the w T ind does not blow too hard they are out
long before sunrise, calling brightly to each
other over the snow, busy and merry as only
birds can be.
What becomes of Chickadees
in summer? This question is
often asked by observant country
people who spend most of their
time about dooryards, orchards,
and fields. I have even heard a
superstitious old fellow declare
that with the coming of warm
weather these birds take to
if^A
CHICKADEE
Length 4y 2 inches
CAROLINA WREN 21
the water and are changed into frogs! But
the summer disappearance of the Chickadee is
no mystery to be accounted for by fables ; he has
simply retired to the woods, together with the
Nuthatch and Titmouse, where you may see them
among the green treetops if you look closely,
until the retirement of the migratory birds and
the winter scarcity of food brings them round
our homes again.
CAROLINA WREN
This is our most constant if not our most elo-
quent singer. In all months and all weathers we
are awakened early by the bell-like jingle of
"Percedar, percedar, percedar, perceet!" or
"Jubilee, jubilee, jubilee !" which may be an-
swered from a little distance by "Sweetheart,
sweetheart, sweetheart!" The merriest, sauci-
est, busiest little creatures are all our Wrens,
as friendly as they are excitable. They all carry
a nervous, jerky tail straight up over the back,
and all have a voice and a spirit that seem too
large for such tiny bodies. They are perhaps the
only species smaller than the English sparrows
determined enough to hold their own among
those noisy bullies so as to nest in the back yards
and suburban spaces of town. For this reason
if no other, we are bound to keep a particularly
affectionate spot in our memories for the brown
22
OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
bright Wrens, and to help them by guarding
their nests and by throwing out cracked nuts for
them to peck at in snowy weather.
Last summer a pair of Bewick's Wrens built
their big, loose nest in the underpinning of my
tent floor. For weeks they came and went all
day long; after the young were hatched they
stopped on every trip to sing, with a happy little
flutter of wings and tail, a
triumphal carol over the
mouthful brought. Such a
celebration when the fledg-
lings quit the nest — such
urging, such coaxing and
scolding of the reluctant
youngsters, and what burst-
ing every minute into loud,
excited song!
A pair of House Wrens
also perched on the canvas
of mornings, and a short, perky, jerky Winter
Wren, later in the year, was pleased to explore
a broken stump near by. The Bewick's Wrens
and the Carolina Wren several times ventured
into the tent, probably by mistake, when I was
studying quietly. It was interesting to note that
while others might forget the w T ay out and go
into a panic, the Carolina Wren behaved like
one sure of his welcome, now examining every
BEWICK'S WREN
Length 5 inches
HOUSE WREN
23
object on the table, and now hopping across the
floor in pursuit of a spicier.
The song of the House Wren sounds like "I
see a man up a trrreee," in clear trilled notes
like rippling water; the Bewick's is similar in
quality, but differs in the arrangement of the
notes.
All three of the commoner Wrens make them-
selves very much at home about
dwellings and outbuildings ; one
even hears a Wren sing in an
empty room, sometimes, with
startling loudness and clear-
ness. They all expend a great
deal of fussy energy in the
business of building; the nest
is a large mass of grasses, dry
oak tassels, trash of all kinds,
feathers and hair and string.
It may be placed in shelves,
eaves, bird boxes, and even in tin cans. One I
knew in a paper bag, forgotten on the shelf of
an outhouse ; one in an old garden sprinkler ; and
one which I keep in a box to itself was built in
the rolled-up fold of a tent. It is quite arched
over, with the entrance at one side. One dainty,
freckled tail feather from a summer molt lies
inside it, — a souvenir of the proprietor — which
I would not think of removing.
HOUSE WREN
Length 4% inches
24 OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
This habit of building in all sorts of odd
places makes the Wren a veritable tricksy Puck
to superstitious people who think it is "bad
luck" if a bird builds in one's clothes. I have
seen strong men turn pale and tremble on dis-
covering a Wren's nest in some forgotten pocket
or shoe!
Marsh Wrens, both the Long-billed and the
Short-billed varieties, are found in brushy places
near the water. Like other Wrens, they carry
their tails erect and all their movements are
rather jerky. But their nests are peculiar —
globular affairs woven of grasses, entered from
the side, and laced tight to the criss-crossed
stems of reeds or other undergrowth. The eggs
of the Long-billed are almost chocolate brown in
color; but those of the Short-billed are pure
white.
CAEDINAL
In all the world there is nothing braver than
the heart of a singing bird. Can you think what
it means to be so small and so beautiful in a
world full of guns and traps, of cats and hawks,
of crafty snakes and crows and squirrels and
blue jays all of whom rob the nest, — and yet to
sing and sing again that all nature is good, is
good !
Of all the birds who endure our winters with
their inevitable hardships and perils of storm,
CARDINAL , 25
cold, and hunger, none is so beautiful as the
Cardinal, and probably none is so much sought
after by enemies of all kinds. His color is con-
spicuous as an electric spark, flashing alike in
contrast to snow, to the green of summer, the
gray of winter, or the gloom of the cedars in
which he delights to dwell.
His song is no less attractive than his plu-
mage, — that keen whip-like whistle of "Woit,
woit, ten, ten, ten; woit ten; whittoo whittoo
whittoo. Whip! woiche woiche woiche woiche."
A friend of mine and his declares that he sits
by the road on rainy mornings when the children
are going by to school, and delivers a timely
warning of "Wet shoes, wet, wet, wet, wet
shoes!"
There is something gracious and lofty in the
very bearing of the Cardinal, as if he could not
stoop to do a mean or discourteous thing; and
in this his disposition bears out his appearance.
He is a kind and praiseworthy consort, very
attentive to his olive-colored mate, who sings
nearly as well as he. He guards and protects
her and their brood, and does his full share of
the labor of rearing the young.
Formerly many of these valuable birds were
caged and sent out of the country every year,
and many more were stuffed to meet some peo-
ple's strange ideas of ornament; but the laws
26
OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
(s^^^
CARDINAL
Length 9 inches
3^Y
CROW 27
that exist for their protection in almost every
Southern state are now being enforced more
strictly. It is to be hoped the day is not far
distant when the Cardinal shall build his one,
two, or even three nests a season in our door-
yard cedars undisturbed, and take shelter from
blizzards in our barn lofts unmolested; when his
long confidence and helpfulness shall at last be
met by the response of human friendship and
encouragement.
The beautiful and noble Eosebreasted Gros-
beak, which the Middle West prizes as adjutant
to the farmer because he eats potato bugs, is a
near kinsman of our Cardinal. His range begins
about where the Cardinal's comes to an end.
But he does not try to bear the pinch of winter;
and during his period of migration in early April
he sometimes rests for a few days in the south-
ern mountains, and tries over for us the rich,
sweet, rolling warble that is his spring song.
CROW
Have you ever watched a flock of Crows feed-
ing over a field? How glossy is their plumage,
how lofty their port ! They bear themselves like
born aristocrats, lords of the soil; the flirt of a
Crow's wings and tail is like the gesture with
which a cavalier should toss back his velvet cape
from the hilt of his sword. The Crow has dig-
28
OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
nity without strutting, and shrewdness without
sneaking. I have no hesitation in calling him
the most intelligent bird I know. Few are the
planters whose strategy he cannot outwit; few
the hunters who can slip upon him. But though
he has all the destructive and mischievous habits
of the Blue jay, except that he does not attack
smaller birds, and though he is in addition an
accomplished corn - thief,
we, all of us, retain a cer-
tain respect and something
like admiration for Jim
Crow.
Crows of one kind and
another are well distrib-
uted over the world; they
survive in great numbers
the Eussian winters and
the famines of India. This
proves them to be a type of
special fitness, highly successful in nature's com-
petitive economical scheme. Their success in
thriving where others fail is due not only to indi-
vidual intelligence, but to their close co-operation
with each other. Every member of a flock is able
to communicate with and to aid every other mem-
ber. If you try to slip up on them unawares you
will see how quickly the first that spies you gives
the alarm; and if you do not believe that Crows
CROW
Length 19 inches
CROW 20
have a sort of language, notice what a different
note is sounded to warn the flock of a man with
a gun — different from, say, the note that tells
of a child aimlessly crossing their feeding-
ground.
Can crows be taught to talk, parrot fashion?
As a child, I knew a pet crow whose ingenuity
in mischief seemed an uncanny thing. He stole
and hoarded numbers of small objects such as
pencils and thimbles. I remember the dismay
of an old lady whose gold spectacles he carried
to the top of a tall tree, and the frantic efforts
of the family to coax him down without damage
to the lens. He also hid a tiny doll that was one
of my own particular treasures, and remodelled
it to his liking by biting off the hands and feet.
After such a performance it seemed to me only
natural that his cleverness should extend to the
pronunciation of five or six words. But a wider
acquaintance w x ith Crows has since led me to
question whether, among so great a variety of
noises and squawks and caws, a few do not
inevitably happen to sound like words. In any
case the splitting of the tongue never helped a
Crow or any other creature to "talk"; it is a
wholly unnecessary piece of cruelty.
Whether Crow r s have the parrot faculty of
imitating sounds of speech or not, it is certain
that they have a greater range of signals and
30 OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
communication-sounds of their own than other
birds. Like Kipling's Marines, they think for
themselves and they steal for themselves, and
they never ask what's to do. Out of the stark,
comfortless fields of winter 'or out of the snowy
forest he wrings a living by dint of sheer clever-
ness and skill, with a facility that recalls another
of Kipling's lines — "Yon can leave 'im at night
on a bald man's 'ead, to paddle 'is own canoe!"
Bare indeed is the glistening expanse of snow
above which he cannot find a morsel — a chestnut
forgotten in its burr, a chinquapin, a pod of field-
peas missed by the last gleaner, or an unwary
fieldmouse that has ventured too far from home.
But whether employing his talents in mis-
chief, in noisy treetop caucuses, or in the winter
search for food in which success is life or death
to him, the Crow comforts himself with a queer
sardonic nonchalance worthy of an Indian's dig-
nity. Buccaneer of the crop and pirate of the
nest although he be, his numbers are no longer
so formidable as they were a generation ago,
and he remains a feature of our native landscape
that could not well be spared.
No nestlings are noisier than young Crows;
they do not seem to care who knows the location
of their great brushy nest — and indeed it would
be hard to conceal that bushel of crooked twigs,
conspicuous in a treetop. Their feeding- time is
RAVEN 31
proclaimed to all the surrounding woods as
clearly as if they rang a dinner bell.
RAVEN
Larger and shyer than the Crow, the Raven
is never seen in flocks, nor about farms, but
keeps to the heavily wooded mountains. He is
glossy black from beak to tail, with steel-blue
glints of light ; the
feathers of his neck are
long and pointed, instead
of being round like the
Crow's. Whether perch-
ing or in flight his mo-
tions are all slow and
stately. A handsome
bird, with a peculiar raven
p n . i j t Length 25 inches
grace 01 his own; but I
do not know of a harsher, more disagreeable voice
in the woods than the guttural "cr-r-r-cruck"
or the hoarse, half-strangled scream he gives
forth by way of welcoming the spring or making
love to his lady; it seems that if he could only
keep silent, he might make a better impression.
These birds not only mate for life, but return
to the same nest in a tree or a ledge of some
mountain cliff, year after year. It is a well-
shaped nest, not loose like the Crow's, but com-
pact of sticks and lined with grasses, sometimes
32 OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
softened with wool picked up in tufts where a
flock of sheep have rambled through the bushes.
Every season before the two to seven greenish
eggs are laid, this nest is made softer and deeper
by the addition of new material.
DOWNY WOODPECKER
Smallest of all our feathered carpenters is
Downy, and clothed in the true Woodpecker uni-
form of black and white, with a scarlet spot on
the crown of the male.
He is quite tame; one
often finds him chisel-
ing away with his little
pickaxe on trees but a
few feet from the door ;
and he is a frequent
downy woodpecker guest at the feeding
Length 6 inches ^^ ^^ g() many
people are now keeping up for our winter birds.
In summer the Downy Woodpecker is often-
est seen in the cornfield. I was visiting one sum-
mer at a farmhouse where the corn grew right
up to the doors, when the owner interrupted our
talk to get his gun, saying he must shoot that
bird that was riddling his crop. Quickly I
handed him my opera-glass instead, telling him
to watch the bird a moment. As he did so his
features changed with surprise. Lowering the
HAIRY WOODPECKER
33
glass lie cried: "Well, now, don't that beat you
— I saw him catch a worm!" For some time
he continued watching the woodpecker's progress
from one ripening ear to another, studying the
preliminary tap- tap
which, like a doctor's
stethoscope, locates a
cavity, and the final ac-
curate drive in upon the
worm which eats the
milky grains. By the
time Downy flew out of
the field with a joyous
thanksong of i ' peenk-
peenk-peenk, " the gun
was forg-otten, the man
convinced; and I think
there is one farmer
who will never again be
so foolish as to make
war on one of his ablest
helpers.
Like all Woodpeck-
ers, Downy is fond of showing his mate what a
fine drummer he is; and indeed the amount of
resonance the little fellow can bring out of a
dead tree is enough to make anybody wonder.
The Hairy Woodpecker (nine inches) is
larger than Downy, and shyer, keeping to the
HAIRY WOODPECKER
Length 9 inches
34 OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
woods; Both are sometimes called "checker-
back" by those who have not learned to dis-
tinguish the difference. Their pretty, glossy
white eggs are laid in holes which they have been
at pains to dig out with their energetic little
chisels, holes carefully rounded and deeply hol-
lowed, and softened with fine chippings. When
one sees the frailty of other nests and their fre-
quent exposure to severe weather, one wonders
if young Vireos and Buntings do not envy the
cosily housed young Woodpeckers and their well-
protected mother.
YELLOW-BELLIED SAPSUCKER
It is said that this bright-colored Woodpecker
injures fruit trees by boring through the bark to
get at the sap. This is a much-discussed point
in ornithological circles, which we shall be safe
in setting down as not proven. I have never
seen an orchard tree really damaged in this way ;
and by following the Sap sucker and watching
him you may see for yourself that he chops out
and eats borers, worms, and other troublesome
insects as do other Woodpeckers — a habit which
renders actual service to the tree. So suppose
we do not condemn the Sapsucker too hastily.
He is certainly a great drinker of sap, espe-
cially from sweet-flavored trees like the birch.
His habit is to drill holes in regular row on row,
RED-HEADED WOODPECKER
35
and to return in a few days to find them flowing,
or possibly inhabited by insects which he finds
edible. Many creatures come to drink at the tiny
sap-wells when he has thus drilled through the
bark; not only insects, but
certain smaller birds, and
even squirrels. The latter j\
are said sometimes to be-
come oddly intoxicated on
the sweet juices fermented
by the sun.
The Sapsucker's voice is
not pleasant, being louder
and harsher than that of
the Downy and Hairy Wood-
peckers ' ; his notes are
somewhat like the scream of
the Jay. The nest is usu-
ally high off the ground in a
cavity in a tree about as large as that of the
Hairy Woodpecker. Sapsuckers do not nest so
early as the great handsome Pileated birds, but
the eggs are nearly twice as many, laid in May,
after the warm weather has really come.
EED-HEADED WOODPECKER
On the hill where I live are five different
kinds of Woodpeckers : the Downy, the Hairy,
the Bedhead, the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, and
YELLOW-BELLIED
SAPSUCKER
Length &y 2 inches
36
OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
even a splendid pair of Pileated which have so
far escaped the persecution of hunters. They
are all more or less red-headed, at least the
males of each species having a scarlet patch on
the crown. But the bright-
est colored and noisiest, as
alas ! the most mischievous
of all, is Redhead himself.
His mischief is confined
chiefly to the robbing of
other birds' nests, but
whether by this or by his
scolding, quarrelsome ways,
he has given all his kin a
bad name.
Redhead is the most bril-
liantly colored creature in
our winter landscape, and
flies boldly about our lawns
and fields without fearing
to display his colors or to
sound his loud cries, some-
times scolding pointedly at
a dog or a person who seems to him to be tres-
passing on his domain. His home is worth
climbing up to see; the safest, most comfortable
nest, one would say, in the whole bird kingdom.
Its entrance is perfectly circular as if marked
out with a compass; in the bottom, on a bed of
REDHEADED
WOODPECKER
Length 9 % inches
PILEATED WOODPECKER 37
sawdust and chips, are half a dozen or so of
glossy white eggs. One large dead pine I know
of has more than a dozen such round holes in
its trunk ; perhaps the same pair of Woodpeckers
have built there season after season.
Bedhead has the name of being destructive;
and like Jays and Crows, he will rifle the nests
of smaller birds. But his fare and habits change
with the season. In winter beach nuts are
greatly favored, and in summer he hunts fruit
and insects.
The feet of all our Woodpeckers have two
toes pointing forward and two back. Were our
schoolboys equipped with such stout climbers, no
pecan-tree in the land could withhold its nuts.
The Red-bellied Woodpecker is also common
in the Southern states, and the Red-cockaded is
found in the pine woods. But the largest and
most beautiful Woodpecker of all, the Ivory-
billed, is now extinct in the United States, except
in a few counties in Florida.
PILEATED WOODPECKER
Next to the beautiful Ivory-billed, w T hich is
now all but extinct in the United States, the
Pileated Woodpecker is largest of the Wood-
pecker family found in this country, being nearly
if not quite as large as a Crow. Its usual cry
is a "cuk-cuk-cuk-cuk" similar to the note of a
38
OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
scared domestic pullet, which cry has given this
bird in the mountains the name of Wood-hen.
It is also known as Logcock and Cock-of-the-
Woods.
In some ways it
resembles the common
Flicker; it has a simi-
lar long, strong, barbed
tongue, and when two
individuals of the spe-
cies meet they utter a
Flicker - like conversa-
tional note of "wi-
chew" or "wiek-y-up."
The food of this
handsome Woodpecker
consists mainly of
grubs, wood-boring
beetles, and ants that
make their homes in
dead w r ood. To obtain
a meal he chips aw T ay
on log or tree with sur-
prising skill and force, flinging good-sized chips
and splinters in every direction. But he does
not confine himself to dead or rotten trees for
woodcutters' work; he is quite likely to exca-
vate a hole for a sleeping-chamber in the hard
wood of a living tree.
PILEATED WOODPECKER
Length 17 inches
PILEATED WOODPECKER 39
The Pileated Woodpecker mates very early in
spring, and the pair spend about a month in
digging out the nest cavity. Both birds work at
this important task, and after the glossy white
eggs are laid they share the duty of incubation.
It is said, that when the bird on the nest wishes
to go out for food and exercise it will call the
mate, and wait until its coming before quitting
the eggs. They like to return to the same spot
year after year, never using the same nest a
second time, but digging another as near as con-
venient, so that an old tree may show a number
of Woodpecker-holes, each as circular as if it
had been bored. The abandoned nests are
greatly in demand among smaller birds who nest
in hollow wood, and even as nests for squirrels.
This Woodpecker is not so common as in
former years. It does not like cut-over wood-
lands, nor the open pine-barrens of the sandy
country. .One must go to the hammocks of Flor-
ida or to the primeval woods of the southern
Alleghenies to find them still plentiful. Their
black and white markings and the big flaming
head-tuft, vivid in the green shadow, are too
good a field-mark to be missed even by a care-
less eye.
40
OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
FLICKER
To call over the many names by which this
bird is known in different parts of the country is
to suggest a number of his most striking char-
acteristics — High-hole ; Yellow-hammer ; Ground
Woodpecker; Yarrup; Golden-
winged Woodpecker, etc. Of
all these the last is perhaps
most descriptive, for his wings
are indeed lined with yellow
satin, and the larger quills are
bright as gold. All his mark-
ings are showy ; the red crown-
patch, the black cravat and
moustache, the gay polka-dot
vest and the barred brown
coat.
His saucy calls and cries
are as various as his names,
and every country boy or girl
knows them. But not every
one knows of his curious
tongue, twice as long as the bill and hard-
pointed, which he uses in extracting grubs and
other denizens of deep crevices and holes. He
visits the ground much oftener than other Wood-
peckers, and picks up great numbers of ants.
The nest, like that of other Woodpeckers, is
FLICKER
Length 13 inches
SCREECH OWL 41
commonly a hole in a tree, but the Yellowham-
mer is not averse to occupying a ready-made
dwelling and will even thank you for a bird-box
of convenient size.
Although often seen on the ground its feet
are like all Woodpeckers' feet, adapted for cling-
ing erect against tree-trunks, with two toes be-
fore and two behind.
SCREECH OWL
Can you think why the eggs of birds who nest
in the open are usually colored or speckled, while
those laid in a deep or hidden and more or less
dark place are commonly pure white? Can you
find a reason for the difference in the shape of
the eggs — those of sea-fowl who lay on flat
ledges of rock being of a long, almost cone-like
oval; those in cup-shaped nests being oval or
elliptical ; and those placed in deep hollows some-
times quite round? Try to roll some cone-shaped
object, as a thimble or a tumbler, along the floor,
and a reason may suggest itself to you.
Anyway, our little Owl is hatched from a
pure white, globular egg, in a hollow tree nest
so deep and dark that the twin treasures cannot
roll out nor be seen by passing enemies. There
are two white, downy young. Sometimes this
inoffensive little home occupies an angle of the
rafters in an unfrequented barn or cabin loft.
42
OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
SCREECH OWL,
Length 9 inches
SCREECH OWL 43
Some haunt of night-like shadows it is sure to
be, for the Owl's eyes are so made that while he
can see well with almost no light and is free and
happy under the moon, he is dazzled by sun-
shine and does not like to stir abroad by day.
Owls are the only birds who can look at an
object with both eyes at once. The eyes are fixed
in the sockets so that the head must be turned to
face whatever the Owl wishes to look at.
Another peculiarity is the foot, of which two
toes are normally placed in front and two behind.
The outer toe is opposable, like a thumb, and can
be brought round to the front.
They are also the only birds who have an
external ear — not the upstanding feather tufts
we call "horns," but real folds of flesh hidden
under the feathers, and serving, like the ears of
mammals, to catch the vibrations of sound and
turn them inward. The hearing of all Owds is
very acute. The softest slither of a bat's wing
on the leaves, the slightest scratch of a field
mouse's claws at the roots of a tree, and down
comes little Screech Owl like the drop of a velvet
cloth to seize his supper. He eats mice, some
insects, small birds, frogs, and lizards. When not
too large this prey is swallowed entire. After-
ward the bones, hair, and other indigestible parts
are ejected, rolled up in a ball that looks like
some strange cocoon.
44 OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
He has two color phases, a reddish brown and
a gray, which he wears without respect to age,
sex, or season. The best time to watch for him
is at dusk, when he comes out to flit soundlessly
from tree to tree: for he remains unseen and
unseeing by day, and during the night it is our
eyes which are blind and cannot see him.
The well-known cry of the Screech Owl is so
mournful a sound that many people do not like
to hear it. But we may at least be sure that this
uncanny tremolo represents nothing like sadness
in the mood of the producer ; he is never so happy
as when crooning to his mate or to the friendly
moon. I am for letting him enjoy himself in his
own peculiar way. At the worst, it resembles
that of certain of our own poets and novelists
who express themselves best in most doleful
themes, yet on acquaintance are found to be the
jolliest optimists alive.
Negroes often heat a poker in the fire, and
people with recollections of the witchcraft delu-
sion sometimes tie knots in a sheet, to conjure
the little Owl and stop his quavering cry. But
is it not much better to conjure away one's
groundless dislike and terror of so harmless a
creature by a closer acquaintance with its inter-
esting ways?
. Other Owls of the region are the large Barn
Owl with its curious ape-like face, and the Great
KINGFISHER 45
Horned Owl who cries "Whoo, whoo, who — who
— w ] 10 — aw " across the frosty hush of winter
nights, or as schoolboys translate it, "Who —
cooks — for you — all, for you — all?"
It is not quite true that Owls cannot see in
daytime. The Great Horned Owl and some other
species, when they have young to feed, come out
and hunt on dark, cloudy days. It is chiefly these
birds whom we have to thank that the meadow-
mice, which multiply very rapidly, do not become
so numerous as to destroy all our grain in the
stack, and our young fruit trees.
KINGFISHEE
He sits on a dead branch above a pond, creek,
or river, noticing neither bird nor insect, but
watching, watching silently for a glint of silver-
sides in the water below. Suddenly down he
darts, like the head of a spear ; there is a splash,
and a second later up he comes with his dinner.
The ancients called him halcyon, and hung his
dried body to the boat's mast when they cruised
about the Mediterranean, because he was sup-
posed to bring calm and pleasant weather. We
still retain an echo of this lost belief in the
phrase "halcyon days."
He is always a pleasant picture in his blue-
gray speckled coat, with prominent crest and
belt, sitting just above the green rushes, reeds,
46
OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
KINGFISHER
Length 13 inches
KINGFISHER 47
and lilies of the shore. But his voice is enough
to startle the nerves of the hardiest; his harsh
rattling cry can be heard for half a mile up or
down stream. Although only thirteen inches long
he appears larger, because of his short tail and
stout, top-heavy body.
A stout little fellow he has need to be, for his
nest is at the end of a passage dug two or three
feet back into a sand bank. Here is a chamber
large enough for the mother bird — queenfisher,
shall we say? : — to turn around in, and a curious
bed of — fishbones ! A most uncomfortable pallet
on the floor we should find it, and a malodorous
bedroom ; but we may be sure it exactly meets the
liking of the young Kingfishers.
In order that the pair may not find all this
excavation too onerous a task, the Kingfisher's
two outer toes on each foot are joined together
for most of their length, to form a sort of shovel.
Like the Woodpeckers, these birds like to return
to the same place year after year, but they
always drill a new nest-cavity.
This fisherman does not seize his catch in
claws or beak like a bird of prey, but impales it
on his sharp beak by darting upon it with closed
wings through the water, like the fishing-spear of
an Indian. Having caught his dinner he carries
it to his perch ashore, turns the head toward
him, and swallows it whole. Fish of a surprising
48 OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
size can go down in this manner, but frogs, cray-
fish, and some aquatic insects are also eaten.
The scales, fins, bones, and other indigestible
portions are afterward cast up in pellets, as is
the custom with Owls.
Minnows and suckers, and other small fish of
no special value, are those most frequently taken
by the Kingfisher along the streams and rivers
which are his usual home. But on the shores of
trout streams or of artificial lakes which are
stocked with valuable fish he is considered quite
a nuisance, and for this reason is not protected
by law.
In spite of this his brilliant color and unusual
shape, his interesting ways and good disposition,
make him one of our most attractive and best
known birds. Kingfishers have always been
favorites with all peoples the world over; and
even hunters and fishermen are not eager to take
a shot at them.
WILD TURKEY
Any one who has followed the trail of the
turkey through its native woods, or who has made
the acquaintance of some lustrous purple-legged
baron hatched from a wild egg and raised in a
poultry yard, will not grudge this species the
phrase that has often been applied to it —
"noblest of American birds." An appreciative
WILD TURKEY 49
Southern writer, Mr. Lanier, once suggested that
the Wild Turkey would be a better choice for
adoption as our national emblem, instead of the
rapacious and quarrelsome Eagle; but, however
suitable to American ideals and character this
change might be, it is not likely to take place, for
the reason that this splendid game bird is being
killed off at a rate that insures its disappearance
from all but the wildest parts of its range. In
short, the Wild Turkey will probably be nearly
extinct before the general public becomes ac-
quainted with him.
In past years one might come upon these
birds feeding over burnt areas of woodland,
picking up acorns and insects from the ground;
or one might hear the early morning gobbling
of the male at a favored roost, or the plaintive
kyonck-kyonck of the female. I have surprised
a whole family of the young poults walking
together in a quiet thicket, slipping away like
shadows as soon as my presence was known to
them. The wild gobblers even used to visit the
range of domestic poultry and consort with them.
But only the wariest mountain hunters, or those
in Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, Florida,
and the wildest parts of the Southern Alle-
ghenies, can boast of seeing them in recent times.
In their habits, the turkeys of the deep forest
are not very different from those of the barn-
50 OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
yard. They live in bands of from twelve to
twenty, feeding together by day upon nuts and
acorns, and flying up into a chosen roost-tree at
night. At the beginning of the breeding season,
however, these flocks disband, and the males
begin to gobble as they seek their mates. The
sound of their gobbling is usually heard early iji
the morning; it is associated in my memory with
perfumed banks of azalea bloom dripping with
clew.
At this season the great gobblers rustle stiffly
about, displaying their plumes, and often fight to
see which shall be leader of a flock of admiring
hens. As soon, however, as those same hens are
safely retired to the secret places of the under-
brush, each with her precious clutch of freckled
eggs, the males forget their differences and go
foraging amicably together, leaving the hens to
bring up the new broods. But if young Wild
Turkey poults are as difficult to rear safely as
those of the domestic species, one wonders that
among so many enemies, rainstorms, and other
mischances, the most careful mothering ever en-
ables a family to grow up.
RUFFED GBOITSE
In former years on a tramp through the
mountain woods one was quite likely to be
startled by the sudden whirr of this bird's sud-
RUFFED GROUSE 51
den rise. Or one might come upon a rounded
hollow beside a log where the wild hen had been
taking a dust bath; or would hear, from the
dense laurel, the male's remarkable drumming,
— thump, thump, thump, thump-thump-thump
flllllump. This sound is produced by striking the
air with the short, stiff, concave wings, much as
a rooster flaps his wings before crowing. Al-
though a stump or log is almost always chosen
for a drumming-place, the w x ood is not struck
during this performance, neither is the bird's
own body. Like the hollow noise made by the
Mghthawk in diving through the air, the boom
or thump is produced by the wings alone.
But rare indeed is the luck of seeing or even
hearing a Grouse at the present day. This
superb game bird is the particular delight of
hunters; and as it relies mostly on protective
coloring for safety and cannot make long flights,
but in the hunter's phraseology "lies well to a
dog," most records of this Grouse over its entire
range read "formerly very common," — a tragic
phrase occurring all too often in the history of
American bird life.
This bird is miscalled "pheasant" through
much of its territory, and in New England is
known as "partridge."
The nest, under a brushpile or at the base of
a tree, is very much like a small domestic hen's,
52 OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
and apt to be as full of eggs. The young are
hatched thickly covered with down and striped
on head and back like Brown Leghorn chicks.
They are able to run about and scratch the day
after they quit the shell. A pretty sight, but one
rarely seen, for like young Bob-Whites they
squat and hide at the first alarm, and do not
come out until their mother warns them that all
is safe again. Meantime she falls and flutters
and pleads and pretends, using every device to
draw attention from the precious brood.
They roost in evergreen thickets, and live in
summer on insects and berries. In winter the
little partridge-berry vine spreads them a meal
along the banks of rocky streams, but when the
snow covers these there are still catkins, and
buds, and the bitter scarlet berries of the holly.
BOB-WHITE
Every girl has found the nest, or walked into
the midst of a newly hatched brood that disap-
peared in a twinkling under the smallest sticks
and leaves. Every boy has whistled to spring
woods and fields to bring the ready answer,
"Bob White! Bob White!" and the inquiring
"scatter-call" of "Whitie? Whitie?"
Not much of a song it seems, but we may all
be glad that Bob White is now classed as a song-
bird and placed under government protection.
BOB-WHITE
53
He is more to be valued as an ally of the farmer
than as a game bird, although, like chickens, he
eats pretty much everything edible. He likes to
run through wheat or cowpeas, gleaning; but his
services in making away with the pestiferous
cotton boll weevil and
other harmful insects
more than pay his keep.
In other ways, too,
the Bob - Whites are
rather like barn-yard
chickens, being scratch-
ers. They herd to-
gether when the pair-
ing season ends, and
they share each other's
nests. Ten or fifteen
eggs is quite enough
for one pair of such
short wings to cover,
but where several of
these little hens occupy
one nest, the number
may reach two or three
dozen. The young also resemble Bantam chicks,
downy, brown-striped; they are what is called
praecocial, that is, precocious children, able to
run about and scratch the day after they pip
the shell. But the male Bob-White could teach
BOB WHITE
Length 10 inches
54 OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
Chantecler a lesson; he makes himself useful
as a husband and father, helping to incubate the
eggs and care for the young.
The experiment is often tried of hatching
Bob-White eggs under a domestic hen, but I have
never seen it succeed; the attentions of so heavy
and clumsy a foster-mother is sure to trample the
life out of the little ones. It is said, besides, that
although young Bob-Whites are quick to scatter
and hide at the warning sounded when a hawk or
other danger is nigh, they will not rejoin a
mother who cannot give the return call of
"Whitie, Whitie," and so wander off and are
lost.
In winter Bob-Whites are found in bevies, fre-
quenting thickets and bottom lands. At this
season they eat a great many of the pretty part-
ridge-berries that grow in rocky woods on a little
vine, with buds and berries of all sorts. They
sleep on the ground, tail to tail in a close circle,
with heads pointing outward, in small open
places among bushes or tufts of grass.
FIELD SPABROW
With the exception of the noisy, bullying
English Sparrow, all our Sparrows are innocent,
friendly, useful little birds. None are of brilliant
plumage, but some are very pleasing songsters.
Of them all none is prettier in ways and coloring
FIELD SPARROW
55
than the Field Sparrow, whose bright pale brown
flocks like brushy pastures best, but are common
in fields and gardens in late summer. Their
usefulness is evident in autumn and winter as
FIELD SPARROW
Length 5% inches
they drift through wayside weed patches, peck-
ing away at seeds that left to themselves would
produce an abnormally troublesome crop next
year. The young are reared chiefly on even more
troublesome insect pests. Their nest is on the
ground or in low bushes, a frail structure of fine
grass.
56 OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
Lucy Larcom, who wrote so tenderly of birds
and flowers, has left us this pretty verse about
the Field Sparrow:
"One syllable, clear and soft
As a raindrop's silvery patter,
Or a tinkling fairy-bell, heard aloft
In the midst of the merry chatter
Of robin and linnet and wren and jay, —
One syllable oft repeated:
He has but a word to say,
And of that he will not be cheated. ' '
A pinkish bill and rather paler coloring dis-
tinguish this Sparrow from others resident in
the Southern states, as the Henslow and Pine-
woods Sparrows, which are not so common.
Henslow may be known by an olive green head
striped with black; he is seen most often in old
sedge-grass fields. The Pinewoods Sparrow
makes his home among pines and under scrub
palmettos, and even in summer does not venture
far north of Georgia. It is a famous songster,
said by some authorities to equal even the Thrush
in quality of tone.
All our native Sparrows inhabit fields, plains,
and marshes, where their brownish streaks and
markings render them inconspicuous among the
usual growth. The various species are often dif-
ficult to distinguish at first; but so much indi-
SEASIDE SPARROW
57
viduality have they that once their acquaintance
is made you can never mistake a Field Sparrow
for a Chippy, or a Fox for a Whitethroat. Their
attitudes, motions, and bearing are all different,
in spite of the similarity of markings and color-
HENSLOW'S SPARROW
Length 5 inches
ing. The many varieties well repay our attention
and study, for no large family of birds is more
amiable or of more helpful service than that of
our native Sparrows.
SEASIDE SPARROW
All along the Atlantic seaboard we may find
this a common Sparrow, and though its flocks
winter south of Virginia and return northward
in spring, yet enough of their number remain
58 OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
along the Southern coast during the nesting sea-
son so that we may fairly write the Seaside
Sparrow as a permanent resident. Without defi-
nite coloring or markings, they live so well hid-
den that one seldom realizes how plentiful they
are. It is only w r hen disturbed that they take
flight and are plainly visible. For the most part
they run like mice among the grasses, faintly
chirping, sharing their salt marsh or creek with
Savannah and Swamp Sparrows, busily feeding
on "sand fleas" under the drift cast up by the
tide, and on the seeds of weeds, and marsh in-
sects, and now and then mounting a tall reed or
a bush to deliver the four or five notes that make
up their only musical effort.
The nest is woven of seaweed and marsh
grass, attached to the grass stalks a little above
ground, and sometimes arched and roofed over
with dry seaweed.
Rather more noticeably marked but identical
in habits is the Sharp-tailed Sparrow, who fre-
quents the same salt meadows and streams
emptying into the ocean. His narrow tail quills
are sharply pointed, hence the name.
The nest is very similar to that of the last,
but for it a drier site is commonly chosen, in a
tussock of grass, or in the drift and seaweed cast
up by the tide along the shore. The greenish
white eggs, specked with brown, look precisely
ENGLISH SPARROW 59
alike in the nests of both species, and the squeaky
little voices of both birds are indistinguishable.
We have to examine the tail feathers, and look
for a small bright yellow spot before the eyes to
be sure that it is a Sharp-tailed Sparrow.
ENGLISH SPARROW
It is easy to understand how the original mis-
take came to be made, in 1851 and 1852, of intro-
ducing this bird of the Old World among Ameri-
can species; but why, oh, why need the same
error have been repeated
recently in the case of the
Starling? It is always a
risk to disturb the nat-
ural balance of animal
life by transferring a spe- "^English sparrow
cies from its native conti- Lensth 6% inches
nent to another. To be sure, the introduction of
reindeer into Newfoundland has by all accounts
worked well; but the reindeer is a domestic ani-
mal directly under man's control; whereas for
one such success there are several disastrous
experiments on record, such as the importation
of rabbits into Australia, and that of the mon-
goose into Jamaica.
Usually a species so introduced into a foreign
country fails in some respect to wholly adapt
itself to the new habitat, and soon dies out of
60 OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
the locality, to be heard of there no more. But
occasionally it happens that the alien species
being superior in adaptability makes haste to
adjust itself, and being hardy, thrifty, and of
rapid breeding tendencies, manages to over-live
the native species, and even to drive them out as
the white man over-lived and drove out the
Indian.
Many of our most troublesome weeds, coming
originally from Europe, have out-done even the
commonest American vegetation in this way.
But the most notorious example of this sort of
error is the English Sparrow.
Few birds in the world are more unlovely or
less generally useful than this dirty, noisy, quar-
relsome little street gamin. By those who
brought the first pairs across the Atlantic it was
supposed that this Sparrow would be of service
in clearing village streets of insect life; but his
appetite proved to be appreciative of pretty
much everything, including sprouting suburban
gardens and stores of grain. So long as the
nuisance was confined to towns and cities, where
a certain amount of noise and dirt seems inevit-
able anyway, no alarm was felt. But they are no
longer confined to towns or even to suburbs. The
terrible fitness, the all-conquering adaptability of
this Sparrow extends itself to all but the prime-
val forest.
CAROLINA DOVE 61
English Sparrows can make a nest of any
available material in any available place, and a
living where other birds would starve. They do
not, as is sometimes said, fight away other birds ;
they have no need to do so. It is only necessary
for them to take possession of all nesting sites
in advance of others. Rapid multiplication does
the rest. Changes in environment do not disturb
them; accidents to the nest are mere episodes of
the season, since they rear several broods in suc-
cession, and if one mate is killed, its survivor
immediately finds another; and they are undis-
mayed by our most rigorous weather.
The most remote settlements and even coun-
try homes are no longer safe from invasion.
Only the sparsely inhabited mountains and Trop-
ical Florida are free from this pest, and it may
be only a question of time and further settlement
till they too shall be colonized. Sparrow traps
do much to mitigate the annoyance, but we may
never again hope to hear around our homes the
true chorus of native songsters undisturbed by
the loud, harsh Sparrow chirping.
CAROLINA DOVE — MOURNING DOVE
A boy once told me that '-every dove has one
drop of human blood in its body, and if you kill
one it'll haunt you." Such a superstition must
have come, I think, from the tender expression
62
OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
CAROLINA DOVE 63
of the dove's eyes and the meekness of its bear-
ing. And though all false beliefs are hurtful, I
could almost wish that this one might be gener-
ally taught and encouraged, if it might be a
means of ending the slaughter of this useful and
lovely bird throughout the Southern states.
Doves are most frequently seen walking —
walking, not hopping, with their round smooth
heads bobbing prettily at every step — in open
woods or fields and along country roads. Every-
where and always they are occupied in looking
for weed seed. Each single dove will eat, in the
course of the autumn and winter, a quantity of
the seed of noxious weeds that saves man or boy
days and days of back-breaking labor in the field
and garden next year. The dove has been for
centuries admired as the world's type of inno-
cence and gentleness ; but few even of those who
love these birds best have realized how great a
help their work is to that of cultivators.
Many Southern boys hail the slow, sweet coo-
ing of the Dove in March as the signal for taking
off shoes and stockings, just as European peasant
children listen for the call of the old-world
Cuckoo. But careful elders should warn them
that March is unsafe for barefoot-time, although
we are too far south to follow Poor Richard's
New England rule, "Change not a clout till May
be out." Perhaps it would be better to take the
64 OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
arrival of the Chat or the Thrush as the signal
for barefeet, instead of listening to one so reck-
less of untimely frosts as our friendly Dove.
The nest is loosely and carelessly woven of
sticks laid in the fork of a tree, scarcely pro-
tecting the two white eggs, which sometimes fall
out. The young, like those of all doves and
pigeons, are fed by regurgitation, that is, with
predigested food from the crops of both parents.
Their tender, naked bodies cannot be very com-
fortable or even safe in such a rudely con-
structed lattice-work of twigs, but they have the
gentlest care and brooding. Two or three broods
are raised in a season.
Doves, like others of the Pigeon family, are
believed to mate for life. Their lover-like ways
and refined manners are very pleasing to watch,
as they walk about in pairs during the nesting
season. Usually they go in pairs, or in small
flocks, and never nest in colonies as did the
Passenger Pigeon. For this reason it will prob-
ably never be exterminated like its ill-fated rela-
tive. While in some localities they have become
rarer than we could wish," owing to excessive per-
secution by hunters, their name has now been
removed from the game list and their numbers
allowed a gradual increase.
On the wing, like most Doves and Pigeons,
the Carolina Dove is a strong and swift flier, but
GOLDFINCH 65
on the ground the short legs and pretty, rosy
feet can take only mincing steps. Another pecu-
liarity which it shares with this whole family
of birds is the ability to drink without raising
the head to swallow as other birds are obliged to
do. The Dove's beak is immersed and the bird
drinks as steadily and deeply as a horse. They
sometimes nest miles from water, and early in
the morning fly in pairs or in small companies
to the nearest drinking-place, cleaving the air
like bullets with whistling wings over your still
sleepy head.
A pretty little Ground Dove, not much larger
than a Sparrow, is not uncommon in the Gulf
States and is sometimes found as far north as
the Carolinas. It frequents old fields, swamps,
and pine barrens, and builds a nest on the
ground or in a bush, laying two pure white eggs.
It is rather darker and browner in color than
the larger Dove, and its red beak and pink breast
feathers distinguish it clearly.
GOLDFINCH
Which is bird and which is blossom, as they
flutter over the sunflower whose broad bosom is
so generously filled with ripening seeds? Black
and gold could not be more vivid: I have actu-
ally seen a big bumblebee deceived by it into
flying at a Goldfinch, who drew daintily back and
66
OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
GOLDFINCH
Length 5^ inches
GOLDFINCH 67
regarded the blundering intruder as if wishing
to tell him he was "as crazy as he looked."
But the bright canary-like yellow of the male
Goldfinch's summer plumage is molted in au-
tumn, and for the rest of the year he is dull-
colored like the female.
Their food is chiefly of seeds, lettuce seeds
being so favored that they are sometimes called
Lettuce-birds, and for a similar reason Thistle-
birds; but plant-lice and other small insects are
also eaten.
The song is quite canary-like, but softer, with
a variety of pretty chirps and trills. On the
wing, their undulating course is punctuated by
a twitter described by the mountain people as
"Meat's cheaper — meat's cheaper"; and there
is also a call-note, "te-zwee-ee? te-zwee?" with
rising inflection.
The nest is very pretty, made of grass and
plant fibres and lined with thistle down. It is
often placed in alders or other thick waterside
growth. There are from three to six pale blue
eggs. The nesting time is delayed beyond that
of most of our small birds, as late as June or
even July.
During the winter, when most of our gay
song birds have deserted us, we are often glad-
dened by a bright cluster of clear twittering
notes, falling as it were out of the sky, where
68 OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
these Goldfinches seem to be bounding along with
the motion of sea waves. Many are the dainty
pictures of Goldfinch life that come readily to
mind — a Goldfinch and his mate on the tassels
of a summer cornfield; a Goldfinch making his
exquisite toilet on a bean vine just outside my
window before sunrise, on several mornings in
succession; Goldfinches on the thistles or the wild
lettuce of an old field, pecking seeds; a male
bright as a flower, hopping alone among the gar-
den beds; Goldfinches swaying on the slender
culms of nearly ripened oats, picking out the
milky grains; a single beauty .on the top twig
of a peach tree, standing on his head to strip it
of sap-sucking aphides, and righting himself to
sing like a Canary between mouthfuls. Our
whole year would lose a jewel if this bright com-
pany should leave us by any ill chance; they
enrich and gladden the days of every season.
ROBIN
In Tennessee and southward we hardly know
the Eobin as a spring songster; he is more con-
spicuous as a winter visitor, appearing in flocks
that come and go erratically over their feeding
grounds. The Robin resident from Georgia to
the Carolinas is less vividly colored than the
normal type, and is usually written as a separate
species — the Southern Robin.
ROBIN 69
Until recently many have been killed for food,
although there can be scarcely three bites of
meat on bones so delicate; but the Government
has now taken the Robin under its protection,
making the killing of one a misdemeanor. It is
to be hoped that this course will result in the
return of large numbers of these birds to their
wonted habitat ; for not only are the few cherries
and strawberries which they eat paid for many
times over by the amount of noxious insect life
they remove, but the Rob-
in's song and presence is
a flash of joy we could ill
spare.
What an active, glad-
some, vigorous fellow he
is, and how clearly and
fully he expresses all his <^r~
feelings in his various robin
. -it r. / P Length 10 inches
notes. No refinement 01
musical culture, such as graces his kinsmen the
Thrushes, belongs to him, no elegance of gentle
manners ; we might say that the Wood Thrush is
a violinist to whose recitals we listen in admira-
tion, and Robin is a fiddler to whose jolly strains
we may dance with glee. His notes ring with
positive gladness; his every motion is decided
and free, his bearing alert and open; his presence
dominates the lawn or orchard.
70 OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
His nest, like his erect carriage, shows that
he is not the Eedbreast of England, but a true
Thrush. It looks like a big, careless, dirty
Thrush's nest, being plastered with a cup-like
shell of mud, and often saddled on a bough in
the same way. But it is either less skillfully
made, or else Eobin has not so much discretion
and judgment in placing it as have his woodland
cousins; for a rainstorm is likely to crumble its
wall and mash it out of its moorings — a dis-
aster which I have never known to come upon a
Thrush.
And Eobin has a wider range of nesting sites
to choose from, too; he may tuck his cradle into
the angle of a barn's eaves, or any odd nook
about the farm, for he is a friendly fellow, as
we all know. And however his hearty, happy-
go-lucky ways endear him to us, it seems a pity
he cannot exercise some of the usual Thrush wis-
dom in his architectural affairs.
An old nest in my possession is made chiefly
of quantities of crab-grass and small twigs in a
bulky mass, woven outside with yards and yards
of string, and scraps of rag and paper. There is
the usual shell of hardened mud, lined with root-
lets.
Four eggs of the famous blue are laid, and if
the nest proves safe and satisfactory, a second
brood may be reared in it.
BLUE JAY 71
The food of Robins includes a great variety
of insects, and earthworms pulled from the sod;
the berries of the China tree, holly, and mistle-
toe; wild cherries, as well as those of the or-
chard; service-berries, and dogwood, cedar and
sumach berries.
BLUE JAY
Fine feathers, even in two shades of steel-
bright blue with white borders, do not make a
fine bird of this crafty robber of nests. His
voice betrays him with its screeching "whongee,
whongee, jay! jay! jay! hit 'm a lick, hit ? im a
lick ! ' ' Undeniably he has his own place in crea-
tion, and fills his own sphere of usefulness; but
it is not in the vicinity of our homes, where the
gentler songbirds are more to be desired.
He is accused of murderous attacks on smaller
birds, and certainly eats both eggs and young
when he can find an unguarded nest; but he is
rather cowardly. I have seen a pair of Red--
eyed Vireos, defending their home, put a pair of
these noisy bullies to flight.
Jays are almost as destructive as their cous-
ins the Crows, and have the same love of teasing
and scolding. A gang of them will sometimes
discover the daytime retreat of an inoffensive
Screech Owl and tease and chase him from one
tree to another with malicious glee, as Crows
72
OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
BLUE JAY
Length 11 y 2 inches
MEADOWLARK 73
enjoy driving and teasing a Hawk. They arc
like Crows, too, in the amount of noise they make
about the business of nesting and feeding the
young. Never again will a pair of Jays be
allowed to nest near one dwelling!
Besides animal food Jays eat seeds, and are
ever in search of small nuts and acorns, of which
they hide away a surplus for future use.
The nest is bulky and brushy, usually placed
in a stout crotch of a wide spreading tree rather
high overhead. Four to six grayish eggs, spotted
with brown, are laid. The young birds' first
feathers come in brightly blue, like those of the
parents.
Emerson, alone I believe among observers,
declares that the Blue Jay does "more good than
harm." But when I see a whole neighborhood
of song-birds silenced and terrorized by the pass-
ing of a troop of these feathered Uhlans, I can
only wonder what reason the philosopher had
for his statement. Perhaps he thought of the
flash of color which these bold .azure wings add
to our dun landscape after most bright-colored
birds have followed the sun southward.
MEADOWLAKK
Was it not a Meadowlark who, in the fable,
postponed moving her nest fledglings while the
farmer sent requests for friends and neighbors
74 OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
to help him, but so soon as he took up the sickle
himself fled at once, convinced that reaping
would now actually begin? Not so wise as all
MEADOWLARK
Length 10% inches
this, but still very well acquainted with the ways
of harvests and fields is our friend of the open
as we know him, — flying up before our feet with
a sputtering note of alarm, only to drop out of
sight in the deep grass as a stone drops into a
pool; or showing his bright yellow breast and
black V-shaped collar from the top of a stump
or fence-post; or fifing "spring o' the year —
LOGGERHEAD SHRIKE 75
spring o' the year" from a tree. Like many
other species, these birds are partially migratory
in the latitude of severe winters, but resident
here.
Meadowlarks build their nests on the ground,
and really build it, too, usually arching it over.
This structure shelters from three to five eggs,
specked with brown.
Boys with guns used to consider the Meadow-
lark a game bird; but the Federal migratory
birds laws have put an end to this over most of
the country, and boys with kodaks and field-
glasses are getting a more real and lasting enjoy-
ment out of him today.
These "fiel'-larks," as they are commonly
called in the country, are not really larks at all,
but are related to the Orioles and Blackbirds.
In winter their flocks may be commonly found
over river-bottoms and in marshy places, and
when made bold by the hungry season, they ven-
ture sometimes to glean in the very barnyard
with the chickens.
LOGGERHEAD SHRIKE
Why Loggerhead I have never learned, but he
is well called the Butcher-bird; and handsome as
he is not many of us really like him. He is so
useful that the Federal migratory bird laws pro-
tect him, along with all other perching birds
76 OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
whose food consists chiefly of insects. But when
beetles, lizards, grasshoppers, and field-mice fail,
the Shrike makes a prey of small birds; and it
makes one shudder to see a bonny Warbler or
Kinglet impaled on a thorn or on the barbs of a
wire fence.
The habit of thus impaling its victims, as a
butcher hangs quarters of beef on his hooks,
SHRIKE
Length 9 inches
seems at first a needless and wanton mutilation,
but there is a reason for it. The feet of a
Shrike are not formed with talons, like those of
a bird of prey, but are the slim and clasping
claws of a perching bird. Hence in order to hold
his meat while tearing it to pieces, he pins it
fast with a thorn.
He is no singer, but can only whistle and
LOGGERHEAD SHRIKE 77
squawk. The nest of the pair is usually well
hidden in thickets or bushes, with from five to
seven grayish, spotted eggs to guard.
In October Shrikes get together as do the
Mockingbirds, in small bands, though they are
not wholly migratory. The sight of half a dozen
or more of these handsome birds sitting on a
tree in the morning autumn sunshine is worth
getting out of doors early to see.
This Shrike furnishes an interesting example
of nature's fine and accurate adjustment of the
balance between different forms of life. He kills
small birds in as spectacular and cruel a manner
as do some so-called sportsmen, it is true; but
in a quieter way he is efficient in keeping down
two of the worst enemies the birds have, —
snakes and field-mice. For some of the small
snakes he picks up might certainly grow into
large ones from which even a Woodpecker's hole
affords no protection to young birds; and as to
field-mice, they are so fond of the tidbit of a
bird's egg that I often wonder how a pair of
Meadowlarks or Ground Warblers ever guard
their family to the time of hatching. Logger-
head is a terror to a flock of innocent Field
Sparrows; they cry out and flutter away for
their lives at his descent. But perhaps he is
their benefactor in default of other protection —
as the robber barons of the Middle Ages were
78
OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
tolerated and supported, because they main-
tained the public roads.
BLUEBIRD
To the New England states, where the ma-
jority of American natural histories are written,
the Bluebird is a summer visitor, hence it has
become well known over the United States as the
harbinger of spring ;
but throughout the
southern winter home
its soft contralto
"dearie, dearie" may
be heard in mild
weather at any time of
year. A wintry road-
side may be suddenly
illumined by the de-
scent of a dozen Blue-
bird s on a sumach
bush, or a pokeweed in
late summer may be laid flat under the weight of
a flock coming to eat the purple berries.
A gentler, more amiable deportment than
that of the Bluebird can not be found. Their
pretty sky-colored eggs are often laid in the hol-
lows of old gate-posts or appletrees, for they keep
up some sort of companionship with man and
prefer to nest on farms or near dwellings.
BLUEBIRD
Length 7 inches
BLUEBIRD 79
During the bitter winter of 1895 most of them
were killed through this part of the country and
farther north; their frozen bodies were picked
up where they had fallen from starvation, along
roads and in fields, while many being too ex-
hausted for flight fell easy victims to hawks, cats,
and other natural enemies. Other species also
suffered, but it was not until about 1900 that the
Bluebirds reappeared in anything like their for-
mer numbers. They were so greatly missed that
during this period many people resolved hence-
forth to keep feeding-stations replenished during
snowy weather, that such a calamity might not
occur again. For this bird's disposition is as
celestial as its coloring, and he is as welcome to
everyone as he is familiar to most.
Dusky blue and bronze in winter, the feathers
become brighter in the spring molt; the breast
is then colored like new plowed earth in the "old
red hills of Georgia," and the back and wings of
the male a rich blue, like a fallen fragment of
the middle sky, whereas the color of the female
is less vivid. The Bluebird is often confused
with the Indigo Bunting, but may be distin-
guished by the rusty-red breast and by the beak,
which is narrow and black, while the other is a
true Finch, with beak conical and thick and col-
ored like the feathers.
80
OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
TOWHEE
Sometimes this bird is called Ground Eobin;
the spirited, erect carriage and handsome black-
and-chestnut coloring remind us of the Eobin 's.
In the southern mountains he is known as the
"Joree bird," from one of his loud, ringing
calls; farther north he is called "chewink," from
another call.
Towhees are fre-
quenters of brush
piles and brier
patches, where they
roost at night and
scratch among the
leaves like chickens
in the daytime. The
vivid black and white
of the male, with
chestnut sides, is
easily seen, but the brown female is hardly to be
distinguished from the ground. There are more
of them with us in winter than in summer, be-
cause they are partially migratory, those that
live in the Northern states coming south to spend
the winter.
The nest is usually on the ground, but is
sometimes set up in a low bush. It contains four
or five white eggs dotted over with reddish
TOWHEE
Length 8 inches
PURPLE GRACKLE 81
brown, and is so well hidden among dead leaves
and colorless debris of last year's weeds that one
must be careful not to set a heedless foot upon it.
The Towhee flies low, and keeps to the under-
brush of swampy glades and bushy old fields.
Among the dead leaves and grass he finds his
food of earthworms and larvae, taking also some
ripe berries in season.
PURPLE GRACKLE
This Blackbird is with the Southern states a
permanent resident, though their immense flocks
in the March and September migrations are the
most impressive thing about Blackbirds else-
where. Alas for the cornfield on which such a
flock descends ! This bird is also known as Corn-
thief, though in some sections of the country it
lives mainly on grasshoppers. He is disliked
also on account of his robberies of other birds'
nests.
Never was made a more earnest effort to sing
than a flock of Blackbirds settled on a field or
hillside in spring, and never was a more ludi-
crous failure than the storm of twitterings,
whistles, wheezes, and squeaks that arise from
such a chorus.
Against the unattractiveness and the glaring
faults of Blackbirds, Crows, and Ravens, it must
be set down to their credit that they are all
82 OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
devoted lovers and of a domestic faithfulness
that is admirable. The nest of the Purple
Grackle is built in the treetops, usually in a
neighborhood of dozens of such nests. It is made
of sticks, bark, and grasses, interwoven instead
of being loosely laid like the Crow's, and lined
with mud. The eggs vary greatly in color and
markings.
TURKEY BUZZAED
Over all the country the Vultures are given
credit for their good w r ork as scavengers. No-
body is allowed by law to molest them, and no-
body wishes to do so. Every one realizes that a
Vulture is worth more living than dead. The
birds seem to know of this widespread public
sentiment in their favor, and in many Southern
towns will come into the very streets to feed.
The soaring and circling of these birds is a
conspicuous feature of the Southern landscape.
A more lofty and perfect expression of the
poetry of motion is hard to imagine, short of
the wheeling of spheres in the planetary system.
They seem to circle slowly round some invisible
aerial center, without apparent motion of the
large outspread wings, upheld by some mighty
natural force and impelled and guided only by
wish or will. Such effortless grace, such ample,
free, deliberate progression is hardly found else-
TURKEY BUZZARD
83
84 OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
where in the animal kingdom, — even the eagle
does once in a while bethink himself of a neces-
sity for haste.
Once on the ground, however, the Turkey
Vulture becomes the ridiculous "OP Mis' Buz-
zard'' of Uncle Remus, awkward and bald-
headed, an offense to sight and to another sense.
Except during the nesting season, Vultures
usually resort to a common roost at night. The
cliffs along the brow of Southern mountains,
and the brakes of creeks, harbor a great many.
The large, brown-spotted eggs are laid on some
safe ledge in these bluffs, or in a cave, or, in a
region where great rocks are lacking, either in a
hollow log or tree, or even on the ground under
a log. The young are covered with grayish dow^n
and are helpless for a long time.
Another Vulture quite as common in the
South is the Black Vulture or Carrion Crow, a
smaller bird, with shorter wings that are not all
black, but glisten silvery on the underside. The
heads of both birds are naked, but the Buzzard's
is red — "where Brer Eabbit shoveled hot coals
upon it," according to Uncle Remus — while that
of the Carrion Crow is black. Neither bird has
a voice, except for the utterance of a low grunt-
ing or hissing sound when disturbed.
SPARROW HAWK 85
SPARROW HAWK
"Wild as a Hawk" is a common and highly
expressive phrase. It is not to be wondered at
that this group of swift, beautiful, and valuable
birds should live in terror of the approach of
man; for is not every man's hand against them?
In spite of the fact that only two of our common
Hawks habitually prey upon poultry, every hawk
is in popular speech a "Chicken Hawk" and so
to be killed on sight. It is strange that the
scavenger value of the related family of Vultures
should be so widely recognized and these birds
generally protected, while the no less useful work
of the Hawks in keeping down meadow mice,
grasshoppers, and other mischievous pests is
passed without appreciation.
Smallest of Falcons is the pretty Sparrow
Hawk, scarcely larger than a robin. Its name
belies its usual occupation to some extent, for
while its appearance strikes terror to the hearts
of small birds and sends them into hiding, an
examination of the stomachs of many of these
little Hawks gave a result of far more fur than
feathers — indicating a decided preference for
field-mice. A great many of the larger kinds of
insects are also eaten.
The Sparrow Hawk nests on cliffs or in trees,
but seldom builds for itself, preferring to lay
86
OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
SPARROW HAWK
Length 10 inches
SPARROW HAWK 87
its brown-spotted eggs on the ground, in the top
of a broken-off tree trunk or a cavity, or in a
deserted crow's nest, freshly lined with finer
twigs or bark.
This little fellow's eyesight, like that of other
Hawks, is very keen, and its adjustment wonder-
ful. For instance, he may be sailing high over-
head, crying "killy — killy — killy," but the
movement of a tiny mouse or lizard on the
ground does not escape him. Then in the instant
of his downward pounce, his eyes have changed
their focus so that it requires a swift and clever
mouse to get away. His usual manner of taking
his prey is, however, to dart upon it from a hedge
or bush.
All hawks feed upon meat, some catching in-
sects, snails, frogs, snakes, lizards, and rabbits,
small rodents in plenty, and even fish. The
Eough-legged and the Broad-winged Hawks do
not eat birds or poultry at all. It is a pity to
make the whole tribe suffer for the sins of a few ;
and a great mistake is made by any community
which puts a bounty on the heads of its birds of
prey.
WINTER VISITORS
BROWN CREEPER
A regular winter visitor is this busy worker,
moth-like in his quiet ways and in the velvet
softness of his mottled markings who never in
daylight ceases his searching scrutiny of the
bark of trees. How many small insects he picks
up, what quantities of tiny eggs and larvae, who
can say! His bright eyes seem to see nothing
farther away than the trunk to which he clings;
his sharp beak, curved like a surgeon's needle,
goes into the smallest cranny; his claws bear him
steadily up the bole, helped by the brace of the
stiff, pointed tail feathers. So closely is the
body flattened that it seems like a bit of the bark
itself that is moving, — moving upward, not
down, for, unlike the Nuthatch, the Brown
Creeper works from the roots up. Unlike the
Nuthatch again, he seems to pay little attention
to even the larger boughs, and never descends
to the ground or mingles with other birds in
feeding.
Just a solitary worker, colorless, and song-
less, but so busy as to be happy among us during
all the frozen months; and no doubt the pretty
nest which he hides behind a piece of loosened
88
PINE SISKIN
89
bark or in a hollow of some Canadian timber is
the crown of the year to him as much as to the
most vociferous songster, and the full recom-
pense of all his work.
PINE FINCH OR SISKIN
When a flock of Siskins settles on a pine on
a winter day, it is as if the sombre, dusky tree
burst into bloom, suddenly alive and all
astir, with half concealed movements and
chirpings. Little fluttering wings, thin
as paper, and bright
weightless bodies glide
and dart capriciously
over the bark and twigs ;
every brown cone has
its bird, standing up-
side down to reach be-
tween the scales for
the seed. They
are not confined to
pines, however, but
visit other trees
for the sake of
buds, of which they
eat a great many.
They also flutter
down to the roadside for the seeds of goldenrod
and weeds.
PINE SISKIN
Length 5 inches
90
OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
Pine Siskins are often mistaken for Gold-
finches in winter plumage, but are not quite so
bright-colored and have not the clear voice of the
Goldfinch, although their twittering song is very
pretty. They come to us only in winter, nesting
north of the United States.
CROSSBILL
These curious Finches rove the country
erratically, in gypsy bands, so that while they
appear on the outskirts of our cities every win-
CROSS BILL
Length 6 inches
ter, it is always a surprise to meet them. Their
coloring, dull-red in the male and mottled olive
and yellow in the female, with their interesting
Parrot-like movements, makes them worth seek-
ing among the pine trees; and they are tame
WHITETHROAT SPARROW 91
enough to allow close observation. They cling to
the cones on which they feed, exchanging a short
whistled call-note, and sending a shower of scales
and broken cones down through the branches, for
they can strip a cone with those crossed man-
dibles as quickly as you could do it with your
fingers. Like Waxwings, they often take wing
in a group without apparent reason, and circle
gracefully round to return to the same tree, in
their undulating flight uttering a flute-like whis-
tle. There is also a pleasant little song.
The Crossbill flocks appear to nest wherever
they find themselves in early spring, often when
far south of their usual range, but always in
coniferous trees.
Another bird of eccentric gypsy habits, whose
roving bands may be encountered in winter, is
the Purple Finch. He is not really purple, but a
dull rosy red with Sparrow-like markings, as if a
brown Sparrow had been dipped in grape juice.
A fine singer in his own range, he is seldom or
never heard here, leaving us before his spring
song commences. Unfortunately these beautiful
Finches are too fond of orchard buds to be wel-
comed as frequent visitors.
WHITETHROAT SPARROW
Among the many Sparrows who spend the
winter south of the Ohio none is handsomer than
92
OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
this one, who may be known by his broadly
striped head and the white patch on the throat.
He is larger by half an inch than the English
WHITETHROAT SPARROW
Length 6% inches
Sparrow of town streets. Besides the attraction
of being so richly and harmoniously colored he
offers a little song of his own that sounds like
"I Peabody, peabody, peabody," or "pea-bod-y-
bird," by which name he is frequently known in
WHITETHROAT SPARROW 93
his Northern summer home where he is more
often heard than seen.
In our latitude, however, the winter sunshine
rarely inspires him to more vocal effort than a
few chirps and whistles. We see these White-
throats on the ground in bushy, briery places,
scratching like chickens, often in company with
Fox Sparrows, and Towhees. They are ground
birds, even building their nests on the ground
after their return northward in spring.
An old mountain field I know of, where a
clear "spring-branch" slides with tinkle and
murmur under encroaching shadows of pine and
dogwood, emerging into sunlight in a tangle of
bare bushes and blackberry briers, is a good
place in wiiich to see all the winter sparrows.
On a walk in that direction one is sure to encoun-
ter a group of Swamp Sparrows in the withered
grass, or of the large Fox Sparrows, brown and
glossy like the dry leaves they are so vigorously
tossing about; or Grasshopper Sparrows, with a
yellow spot on the bend of the wing and another
between the eye and the beak, flitting over a
broom-sedge knoll ; or the two white tail feathers
of the Vesper Sparrow flash before he disap-
pears into the grizzly-gray weeds and under-
brush.
These are but a few of the Sparrows who
spend the winter in the Southern states. They
94 OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
are difficult for the beginner to distinguish, being
all of the same general Sparrow type, with
broad, conical Finch-like beaks, soft round heads,
and pleasant ways.
SONG SPAKBOW
One snowy day in March a stranger came to
feed among the Juncos and Wrens on their din-
ner of crumbs, sunflower seeds, and cracked nuts,
for which we had swept bare a rock in the back
yard. We recognized the Song Sparrow "on
whose throat Music hath set her triple-fingered
mark," as Dr. Van Dyke says of him. Afterward
we heard his thanksong from the top of a near-
by pine, a delicious melody, varied and brilliant
as that of a canary. A group of us stood listen-
ing for a time in the doorway, on tiptoe not to
miss a note; then we hunted out the passage in
Thoreau's wonderful Walden which begins, "The
first sparrow of spring! The year beginning
with younger hope than ever!" and read it aloud
with an appreciation none of us had ever felt
before. Thus richly does nature reward us for
a little friendliness, "inasmuch as we have done
it unto one of the least of these."
The Song Sparrow in all its variations is the
most generally distributed and the best known
of our native sparrows. It is a vivacious neigh-
bor like the Chippy, at home in fields, hedges,
SONG SPARROW
95
and gardens, sprinkling the roadside with music,
and blessing every hour of the day with good
cheer. It is common throughout the South in
winter, and enough Song Sparrows remain with
us throughout the
year for most of us
to know them nearly
as well by sound as
by sight — though
the March incident
just related was un-
usual. The song
accompanies the ro-
mance of mating and
nesting, as with most
species.
The nest is some-
times hidden in the
grass and weeds,
where it is at least
safe from hawks, and"
again it may be set
up in the crotch of a
bush, as if the little builders had meadow mice
and clumsy-hoofed cattle in mind. It is cup-
shaped, made of grass and leaves and lined with
hair and fine fibres. From three to five grayish
white, speckled eggs are laid, and two and even
three broods may be raised in a season.
SONG SPARROW
Length 6% inches
96 OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
SAVANNAH SPARROW
This shy ground bird steals through the
weeds and grasses so quietly, and disappears
into the fence or the underbrush so quickly when
disturbed, that one may pass years among the
birds without suspecting how many Savannah
Sparrows inhabit our marshes and pastures dur-
ing the winter. The habit of sitting alone out
of doors while sketching has revealed to me
many of the shyer and quieter species of birds,
who, though easily startled by the slightest move-
ment, will pass close by a motionless figure with-
out fearing or perhaps even suspecting its pres-
ence. It was in this way that I gained my first
sight of the Savannah Sparrow. They were a
small flock feeding in the grass, pecking along
from clump to clump, chirping mildly and soci-
ably, and every now and then raising their pretty
round heads to look watchfully about them.
Their streaked breasts, and the buff markings
round their soft bright eyes, were plain to view;
but they never saw me! If they had, what a
fluttering and scattering away through the old
fields, cat brier and sumach tangles must have
ensued !
This Sparrow is no singer, but before going
north to the lowlands of Canada and Nova Scotia
to build his nest sometimes offers us a weak
SWAMP SPARROW
97
chirp and insect-like trill by way of springtime
greeting.
SWAMP SPARROW
Like a lost riverlet is the sweet monotonous
trill that, issuing from the grassy, brushy tangle
SWAMP SPARROW
Length 5% inches
of the marsh growth, lets you know the little
dark-brown bird is near, usually before your
eyes can find him. Look closely at his bright
bay head, which in winter is striped with black,
and you may be sure of him in whatever sur-
roundings; for in the South he does not always
choose so moist a habitat, but is content in low-
lying brushy pastures and sedge-grass fields.
A stream that has lost its way in crossing a
98
OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
woody flat, and grown up in lush waterweeds
and alder and azalea, suits very well the Swamp
Sparrow's idea of a winter residence. Here you
may see him flying just above the low thicket,
trilling happily as he goes; or walking securely
over the soft mire which your clumsier feet
cannot approach; or even
tripping across the water
on some light pontoon of
chance-caught drift that
looks as if it would
scarcely bear up a fly.
In the spring these
Sparrows, with the Grass-
hoppers and the White-
throats, return to their
northern homes.
GOLDEN-CROWNED
KINGLET
GOLDEN-CROWNED
KINGLET
Length 4 inches
Tiniest and brightest
of the children of winter
is this happy fairy —
smaller and brighter even than the Pine Warbler.
Though most frequently seen pecking for his
scanty fare along pine branches and in evergreen
bushes, he is not confined to such, and being in
winter very sociable with other small birds, goes
wherever they do. I have seen him in the door-
WAXWING 99
yard among Titmice and Juncos, and in a dog-
wood thicket with Chickadees, busily and ami-
cably feeding all together.
He has not much of a song — a few weak
chirps and trills; but his pleasant disposition is
apparent without such evidence.
Another Kinglet, the Ruby-crowned, is
scarcely larger but a louder singer, brightening
our winter days and, like the last, going north to
Canada to build his nest in spring.
WAXWING
Like a Japanese watercolor in finish of detail
and softness of coloring is a group -of Wax-
wings sitting close together, as they love to be,
on a treetop; like a festoon of flying cherubs
in some old master's conception of celestial
regions is the grace of their short flights, wheel-
ing out and back again. Invariably they sug-
gest a work of art, or some finished elegance of
cultivation.
Their affectionate, dainty manners toward
one another win our admiration. Surely the
beauty of such a flock, though songless, well
repays us for the cherries of which they take
toll. But their capacity for destroying canker-
worms is an indorsement quite as strong.
The name Waxwing is given them on account
of the curiously tipped wing feathers. Across
100
OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
each wing is what appears to be a row of drops
of bright red sealing wax. The body color is a
smooth and delicate fawn which sunshine tints
softly golden; there is a tuft on the head, and
a yellow band across the tail.
These birds come and go in flocks, delighting
the very dooryard for a few days and then dis-
appearing for months together. One never
knows w T here to find them, but may walk up on
a pretty group at any time.
In our latitude they are win-
ter visitors, building their
nests from Virginia north-
ward. At the time when a
company of them descends
upon the May cherries and
provokes us to wrath by se-
lecting the ripest and finest,
most of our small birds are
sitting, or have young in the nest, while some
species are already considering a second venture
in home-making. But it is not until June is well
begun, and other birds are through with family
cares for the season, that the beautiful Wax-
wings begin to build.
They seem to have no molting period; their
appearance is always neat and full-feathered.
Where most birds are incessantly in motion,
restlessly changing position and place, nervously
CEDAR WAXWING
Length 7 inches
HERMIT THRUSH 101
searching for and triumphantly seizing their
food, and eating it with watchful glances in all
directions between bites, the Waxwings are
creatures of elegant leisure. They have all the
time there is. Having fed to repletion on great
quantities of juniper and sumach berries, farkle-
berries, wild cherries, worms, and various in-
sects, they retire to the top of a chosen tree to
sit nearly motionless for a long time digesting
their meal and enjoying a low-toned lisping con-
versation. They are a gentle race, taking life
easily, in a gracious and ample spirit that may
well be the envy of those less nobly bred.
HERMIT THRUSH
This is one of the world's famous singers who
comes to winter with us, unheralded and almost
unsuspected. He is not on tour; scarcely a note
of his wonderful summer performance does he
vouchsafe to the most patient and eager listener,
even in early spring. By the time his singing
season opens he is gone to his New England or
Canadian home.
During the cold months we may account him
as the most elegant in appearance and refined in
bearing of all our winter visitors. Smaller and
less distinctly marked than the Wood Thrush, he
slips like a lovely brown bit of shadow between
lichened boulder and Christmas-fern, over mossy
102
OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
log and into a tangle of brush, and melts into
invisibility in the soft gray of the winter woods.
If you can steal upon him while making his
morning toilet, as I have, you are lucky; or if
HERMIT THRUSH
Length 6% inches
you are perfectly quiet he may remain for some
time sitting on a limb before you, regarding you
with gentle confidence and curiosity, and slowly
moving his rust-brown tail up and down.
SUMMER MIGRANTS
SCARLET TANAGER
In the Southern mountains this splendid sum-
mer resident is called the Timber Redbird, to
distinguish it from the Cardinal or " Winter
Redbird." Its wild beauty is invested also with
a certain halo of ro-
mance, since in that
region a pretty brunette,
if she be saucy and spir-
ited, is sometimes spoken
of as a "timber red-
bird. ' '
During the nesting
season when the nuptial
plumage is at its bright-
est, the red of the male
Tanager's body color is
richer even than the
Cardinal's, forming a
striking contrast to the
black wings and tail. At the molt in late summer
he takes on the olive green body plumage of his
mate, only the wings and tail coming in black
as before. Were the little mother as gorgeous
as he, the nest, well hidden as it is in the fresh
SCARLET TANAGER
Length iy 2 inches
103
104 OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
green undergrowth, would never be safe from
the eyes of enemies while she sat on the eggs.
There are three or four of those eggs, cradled -
and hidden and guarded and defended like the
treasures they are; bluish eggs, marked with
brown. In the treetops the beautiful Tanager
sings about them, a bright carol somewhat resem-
bling the Robin's. Up in the world of green
leaves, too, he hunts his food and calls down
' 4 chip-cherr " to his brooding mate, coming to
the ground only to bathe or drink. On the
ground his brilliant scarlet and black make him
as conspicuous as a blaze or a jewel; and he has
not the daring which enables the Cardinal so
often to risk descent.
SUMMER TANAGER
Almost as gorgeous as his wilder cousin is
this red bird of open woods, hedges, and orchards,
and perhaps he is a better singer. His wings
and tail are bronze-red, instead of black like
the Scarlet Tanager 's; and he is easily distin-
guished from the Cardinal by his smooth round
head, not tufted; by the absence of any black
marking round the beak ; and by the difference in
size. This Tanager ? s call-note, too, is distinc-
tively his own, a sharp "chicker" and "ehicky-
tucky-tuck, chicky-tucky-tucky-tuck, ' ' being a
well-known summer sound.
PHOEBE
105
SUMMER TANAGER
Length 7y 2 inches
Like the female of the Cardinal and of the
Scarlet Tanager, the mother bird of this species
is clad in "protective
coloring' ' that renders
her hard to see among
the leaves. Her nest is
placed near the end of
a limb, and made of
fine twigs, strips of
bark, weedstalks, and
leaves, lined more
softly with tendrils and
blossom stems. It con-
tains four bluish or greenish eggs, specked with
cinnamon brown.
PHOEBE
Earliest of birds to return in spring, often
wintering in the Gulf States, the Phoebe should
occupy a very friendly place in our thoughts.
Nearly every bridge in the country has its
Phoebe's nest, the same pair returning to the
spot year after year to build; though it is to be
doubted whether the Phoebes seen in a neighbor-
hood during the winter are the same individuals
as those who in summer make their nests there.
The pairs are supposed to mate, if not for life,
at least for a term of years; but they separate
during the migratory flight.
106
OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
Phoebe is sometimes spoken of as the Bridge
Pewee; but throughout the mountain region they
are known chiefly as rock nesters, building in the
safe overhang of cliffs and sheltered ledges near
streams. They often choose the eaves of a
spring house, or a beam or rafter of a porch,
and will build in a barn or shed if water is not
far away.
I used to know a "rock-
house" under a mountain
bluff where the nest of a
Phoebe was to be seen every
spring, with portions of
those of preceding seasons
still clinging to the face of
the rock, and mud rings —
as many as five might be
counted — marking sites of
others long crumbled away. This historic record
was probably not so extensive as I believed at the
time, since Phoebe may build two or three homes
and hatch a brood from each in a single season.
But the nest itself justified my deep interest,
being cup-like in form, cemented firmly to the
sandstone, and woven of moss and grass and soft
vegetable fibres plastered together with mud.
Phoebe likes to line this structure with chicken
feathers — a habit that frequently causes trouble,
as mites are fatal to baby Phoebes.
PHOEBE
Length 7 inches
WOOD PEWEE
107
This bird's fondness for watery places is ex-
plained by its manner of getting a living. Its
food must be caught on the wing; and the multi-
tude of sawyers, longlegs, gnats, Mayflies, and
mosquitoes that dance above a stream are just
to its liking.
Phoebe's color is dusky
olive, with a pearl-white
breast. He wears a dark
crown cap, and the outer
tail feathers have a rim of
white. There is no song,
but a monotonous note of
' 6 Phoebe, phoebe, pewit,
phoebe." Although the
spring arrival is so early,
it is May before the four or five white eggs are
laid.
The- Wood Pewee's call is softer and more
plaintive — a drawling ' ' pe-wee, pee-ah-wee. ' '
Its nest, high among the trees, is of soft fibres
covered outside with lichens ; not so deep as the
Gnatcatcher's but saddled on a limb in a similar
way, so as to appear from below like a mossy
knot.
Other Flycatchers who visit us are the
Crested Flycatcher, who has the peculiar habit
of weaving a cast snake-skin into the lining of
his nest, and the smaller Acadian Flycatcher.
WOOD PEWEE
Length 6^ inches
108 OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
All this family may be known by their way of
sitting very still on a dead twig or other open
GREATCRESTED FLYCATCHER
Length 9 inches
perch, and darting ont after flying insects, to
return to the same place and watchful attitude.
RED-EYED VIREO
"Are you weary? Why is it? We can cheer
you; we know the secret; this is it: holy spirit;
do you believe it? you know it; you see it; can
you hear me?"
This is the Preacher delivering his matins
from among the green boughs to all and sundry.
He is actively in pursuit of a meal throughout
the course of his rambling recitative.
Every fly or worm that he seizes from the
RED-EYED VIREO
109
under side of a leaf has to be vigorously thumped
against a twig and killed before it is swallowed,
but none of this business interrupts the sermon
RED-EYED VIREO
Length 6 inches
— or is he really pronouncing a cheerful grace
upon his meat?
The Eed-eyed Vireo is one of the last birds
to be silenced by the advance of summer, and
110
OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
one of the most common and widely distributed
of our small insect hunters. He may be known
by the olive general coloring that makes him
difficult to distinguish
among the leaves, by
the gray cap, and the
white line over the
eye ; the breast is
pearly white. But I
never could see that
his eyes w r ere redder than those of an ordinary
brunette, although they may not be as black as
those of a Wood Warbler or a flying squirrel.
YELLOW-THROATED VIREO
Length 5% inches
MOUNTAIN SOLITARY VIREO
Length 5% inches
The nest is a tantalizing object to cats and
other groundling enemies, being unlike most
bird-homes easier to see than to reach. It is a
BOBOLINK 111
pretty little gray basket, smoothly and firmly
woven of strips of bark, and hung in the fork of
a branch far out from the main body of the tree.
It is lined with finer vegetable fibres and plant-
down. Often the outside is fairly shingled over
with fragments torn from old hornets' nests,
and daubed with wads of spiders' silk. You
cannot mistake it for any other nest in the
woods. There are three or four white eggs,
speckled round the larger end.
The Yellow-throated Vireo is a little larger,
and keeps more to the w^oods, rarely coming into
our dooryards as does the Preacher. He sings
much the same tune, but sings in a contralto
voice, and is less oratorical than Redeye's so-
prano delivery.
The Mountain Solitary Vireo builds in the
Southern Alleghenies, and the White-eyed Vireo
sometimes winters in the Gulf States.
BOBOLINK
This singer of the open field is but a transient
visitor in the Middle South. His summer home
is from New Jersey and Kansas northward;
later in the season, wiien his gay nuptial plumage
has been molted, he fattens on Louisiana rice;
and drifts further south, even to Mexico and
South America, for the winter. But almost any
bird of Eastern North America may be a tran-
112
OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
sient in the Middle South during April and
May, since it is directly in the line with the great
migratory routes, and so it comes that his alle-
gretto voluntaries are often borne to our ears
across some rich spring meadow —
Crying, "Phew;
shew, Bobolincoln,
see, see, Wadolin-
coln, Down among
the thistle tops, hid-
ing in the butter-
cups ! — Bobolincoln,
Wadolincoln, Win-
ter seeble, follow,
follow me!"
The rule of color
among birds is that
the upper parts
shall be dark and the breast and underparts
lighter in tone. But the male Bobolink gives the
impression of having put on his clothes upside
down; for, as we of the last generation used to
declaim from the dear old McGuffy readers :
"Kobert of Lincoln is gayly drest,
Wearing a bright black wedding coat;
White are his shoulders and white his crest.
Hear him call in his merry note,
" Bobolink, bobolink,
Spink, spank, spink,
BOBOLINK
Length 7*4 inches
COWBIRD 113
Look, what a nice new coat is mine ;
Sure, there was never a bird so fine !
Chee, chee, chee."
This harlequin garb accords well with the
bubbling, jerky, almost comic, nature of his
music. His liquid notes tumble over each other
so rapidly and in such quaint variety as to aston-
ish as well as delight the ear. Though he works
considerable damage in rice-growing regions, the
northern climate which claims him during the
nesting and singing season, has no more popular
minstrel than this rollicking composer of humor-
esques.
COWBIRD
Eenegade and slacker we must call him, for
what virtue of diligence in insect hunting can
make up for the one great fault of the species?
For this is the only bird we have in America
who neither makes a nest nor cares for its ow T n
young. The female lays her white egg and then,
watching her chance, slyly carries it to the nest
of some smaller bird wiien the home-builders are
absent, and leaves it to the care of more honest
and responsible parties. Warblers, Sparrows,
and Vireos are all victimized in this manner; and
while some Warblers are bright enough to out-
wit the imposition by building a new nest on top
of the first, they will not do so if their own eggs
114
OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
are already placed, but take upon themselves the
extra task of hatching and rearing the young
Cowbird.
The interloper, being larger than the rightful
nestlings, demands more food and more of the
parent bird's attention,
so that the others suf-
fer and may even be
starved by its greed.
It is believed that
no regular mating takes
place among the Cow-
birds; in short, they
know no family tie.
Appropriately, they are
songless. They are oftenest seen walking about
singly or in promiscuous groups among cows in
the pasture, whence the name.
MOCKING BIRD
It seems that with all the interest that has
been shown by American poets in this brother
of the open, some one of them might have taken
pains to find a name for him that should better
express his personality. Mocking Bird is not
pretty, and besides he is so much more than a
mere mocker; the imitations he puts into his
rich, sweet, wonderful medley are the least part
of its variety and charm. And not all the indi-
COWBIRD
Length 7% inches
MOCKING BIRD
115
viduals of the species are accomplished imita-
tors; .probably this faculty increases with prac-
tice as the bird grows older. Moreover, did he
never sing a note he would still be a delightful
and valuable neighbor, helpful in our war against
cutworms and kindred pests, and fascinatingly
original in his behavior.
The Latin name is scarcely more fortunate —
Mimus Polygiottos, which means the Many-
MOCKING BIRD
Length 10^ inches
tongued Mimic. This troubadour of a thousand
springs ought fitly to have a name from some
musical and romantic language like the Spanish.
But no matter! Once hearing him, and reading
Sidney Lanier's tribute or Walt Whitman's
"Out of the Cradle Endlessly Bocking," one
inevitably inclines to ask what's in a name.
He is quite lordly in his bearing toward other
singers, permitting none of them to be heard in
116 OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
his territory. They may build nests and hunt
for food as they please, but let a Tanager or a
Catbird begin a song from a quiet treetop and
his superior in music is down upon him at once.
The Cardinal, however, is able to dispute his
domain, so that both are frequently heard sing-
ing together on May mornings.
In color and size the Mocking Bird resembles
the Catbird, but is quite distinctly marked with
a white crescent on each wing and two white
feathers in the tail, so that in flight there is a
sort of broken halo round him. Perhaps his
characteristic motions distinguish him even more
readily. In mid-song he springs into the air
from time to time as if unable to contain him-
self; he must even w^ake up in the night to sing
again, trilling, warbling, whistling, and fluttering
excitedly under the April moon. Another pecu-
liarity is his way of lifting and half opening his
wings occasionally while walking or picking up
his dinner on the ground, spreading his white
crescents as though to catch the sun.
It is not fully correct to speak of this group
of related singers, the Mocking Bird, the Cat-
bird, and the Thrasher, as migratory, since all
three often winter in the Gulf States, and as far
north as the Ohio valley are sometimes resident
where found.
The nest of the Mocking Bird is built of sticks
MOCKING BIRD 117
and weeds, lined with fine rootlets, and usually
set in a thicket or tangle of brush. The four or
five eggs are bluish green, with markings of red-
dish brown.
Mr. George Cable, one of our most delightful
Southern novelists, has thus humorously de-
scribed the November behavior of the two favor-
ite birds in Louisiana :
"Only an adventitious China-tree here and
there had been stripped of its golden foliage, and
kept but its ripened berries with the red birds
darting and fluttering around them like so many
hiccoughing Comanches about a dramseller's
tent. And here, if one must tell a thing so pain-
ful, our old friend the mocking bird, neglecting
his faithful wife and letting his home go to
decay, kept dropping in, all hours of the day,
tasting the berries ' rank pulp, stimulating, stimu-
lating, drowning care, you know, — 'Lost so
many children, and the rest gone off in ungrate-
ful forgetfulness of their old hardworking
father'; yes, and ready to sing or fight, just as
any other creature happened not to wish ; and
going home in the evening scolding and swagger-
ing, and getting to bed barely able to hang on
to the roost. It would have been bad enough,
even for a man ; but for a bird — and a mocking
bird!"
118
OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
WOOD THRUSH
Listen to him reverently and with an open
heart, for here is one of the world's perfect
voices. The Thrush tone is the purest and sweet-
est to be found among American birds. Thoreau
WOOD THRUSH
Length 8 inches
says it is "like things drawn up dripping from
the bottom of deep springs."
Whether the Wood Thrush or his smaller,
shyer northern relative, the Hermit Thrush, may
be considered the supreme exemplar of this fam-
ily gift is still in doubt: opinions differ. The
latter bird is rarely heard in the Southern states,
though he is well known as a winter visitor.
Certain South American thrushes and solitaires
WOOD THRUSH 119
are said to possess a timbre and tone-quality
finer still, but I find it hard to imagine.
This leaves the Wood Thrush to be safely
named as the finest singer of our region. Fortu-
nately he is common throughout the wooded por-
tion of the South, and not too shy, — never so
shy as he is reserved, with a delicate dignity of
manner and a love for deep recesses of green
leaves. His lines and finish are graceful as those
of a vase or a violin; he carries himself with a
sort of unhurried courtesy — just what one would
expect in so great a musician. Here is a fit
instrument, fine in every detail, through which
the very soul of music speaks. The song invari-
ably gives one the sense of a private hearing,
as if too rare and lofty to be addressed to the
multitude; it is attuned to vast silences of dawn
or twilight, and to haunts of green shadow that
might echo the pipes of Pan. Written for the
piano, as it has been again and again, it is
arranged as a bar or phrase of notes, followed
by a full rest; then another matchless phrase
ending in the softest evanishing trill, and another
rest; then a third, and so on — forming a regular
sequence of about five different phrases, with full
rests between, repeated over and over in the
same deliberate strain, as different as possible
from the rapid operatic outgush of the Mocking
Bird and his kin.
120
OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
It is a little strange that of all the really fine
poems in which "hush" has been rhymed with
"thrush" since the time of Agassiz, the majority
have celebrated him as an evening songster. To
me the song is chiefly associated with the hour
of dawn, for the thrush is earliest waking of all
VEERY
Length 4.y 2 inches
our birds. Morning after morning it is his voice
that awakes the sleeping forest, when the east is
streaked with rose. Can it be that our American
poets do not rise in time to hear him? Perish
the thought; have they not one and all praised
the morning hours? Thoreau, to whom dawn in
the woods was as familiar as sunset on the pond,
BROWN THRASHER 121
recognizes the thrush as a true poet of inspira-
tion from the length of his singing period, ex-
tending from shortly after his arrival about
April 1st to 10th, to the first hot days of August.
Says the philosopher, "Any man can write
verses in the love season."
Another thrush with a miracle in its throat
is the Veery, smaller and shyer than the Wood
Thrush and less vividly colored. Shadowlike it
slips through low, dense woodlands, and its song
is a wild hymn of shadow, echoing the mystery
and magic of the woods. The Olive-backed
Thrush is also found here.
The Thrush's nest is much like the Robin's,
having an inner wall of mud lined with black
rootlets. It is set in a sapling crotch or saddled
on a bough. The four or five eggs are blue.
BROWN THRASHER
Late in April or about the first of May, as
you pass a brush-pile, a tangle of honeysuckles
or roses, a brier patch, or even a clump of weeds
and grass on the ground, look close for the star-
ing yellow eye, like a chicken's, of a mother
Thrasher on her big brushy nest of sticks. But
do not disturb her; for this is one of our spe-
cially valued birds, and it would be a great pity
if any one of those cinnamon-sprinkled grayish
eggs were to miss its chance of hatching.
122
OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
BROWN THRASHER 123
In song and movements the Thrasher is very
like the Mocking Bird and Catbird, to whom he is
closely related; bnt he is more of a ground bird
than they, darting in and out of brier patches
and fence-rows, looking all over the yard and gar-
den for cutworms and grubworms, mounting to a
treetop only when ready to pour himself out in
song. And what a song! In tone and delivery
it resembles that of the Catbird, but is rounder
and more uniformly sweet, containing no harsh
notes and no imitations. Among writers on birds
there seems a great difference of opinion about
his quality as a musician, some pronouncing his
performance second only to that of the Mocking
Bird, and others declaring it to be a monotonous
repetition of a single phrase. Well, if it be
monotonous, then the Nightingale's is monot-
onous. All agree, I believe, in praising the
sweetness of the Thrasher's tone.
Much confusion has arisen as to the identities
of this bird and the Wood Thrush, although they
are not so similar that they need be mistaken
for each other when one has once had a good
look at them both. The Wood Thrush is not
brown at all except on the head, while this color
extends all over the Thrasher; the breasts are
speckled something alike, but the Thrasher may
be certainly known by the two lighter bars on the
wing. The songs, too, are utterly unlike.
124 OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
Perhaps the mistake arises from a supposi-
tion that the well-known poem of our school-
days, "The Merry Brown Thrush," refers to
one or the other. It is my belief that these .
pretty verses were written in celebration of some
English species not found on this side of the
Atlantic. For the song of the Wood Thrush is not
merry, any more than the music of Bach or
Beethoven is merry; while one line speaks of a
nest "and five eggs hid by me in the juniper-
tree, ' ' but I have never known either Thrush or
Thrasher to build in evergreen trees, the
Thrasher especially being likely to build near the
ground.
CATBIRD
Of all the empty birds' nests in my posses-
sion the most interesting is perhaps that of a
pair of Catbirds, who built it in a plum tree
behind an old barn and in it hatched their young
from four beautiful green-blue eggs. It is quite
soberly lined with fine rootlets; the main struc-
ture is sensibly woven of crab-grass, weeds, and
shreds of grapevine bark and corn husks; but
down in the foundation, made of dry leaves,
cornstalk splints and heavier weed stems, is a
queer notionate collection, perhaps made with
some idea of ornament. There are chicken quills,
wrapping twine, a bit of crumpled newspaper, a
CATBIRD
125
yard or two of floss partly crocheted by some
little girl's hook, half a magazine page, a strip
of rag, and a paper doll's dress! — just a little
of everything, one would say, that could be found
on the farm.
Something of the same capricious collecting
habit enters into the Catbird's song; he gathers
a bit of everything into it.
He begins in a fine musical
tone, like a silver violin, to
sing of the freshness and fra-
grance of the spring morning,
— "phut - phut - coquil - licot,
calumet calumet kereen"; then
thrusts a medley of imitations
into his theme, Whippoorwill
and Tanager notes, Cardinal
and Jay — even trying to ren-
der the Wood Thrush strain,
although to produce the Thrush
tone is far beyond his powers. Again he catches
the full sweetness of his violin, and does beauti-
ful coloratura lacework for a while, only to
break off, as if a string had snapped, into the
harsh cat-call — miaow! miaow! — from which he
derives his name. Some very expressive lines
have been written by an unknown author con-
cerning this quality of Catbird music. The first
stanza runs:
CATBIRD
Length 9 inches
126 OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
You who would with wanton art
Counterfeit another's part,
And with noisy utterance claim
Right to an ignoble name, —
Inharmonious ! — why must you,
To a better self untrue,
Gifted with the charm of song,
Do the generous gift such wrong?
Mark Twain called him the Northern Mock-
ing Bird. It is not strange that in regions
where both are at home in summer, the two birds
should be often confused, as they are rather
similar in appearance, habit, and song. The
Catbird's voice is less round and full in quality
than that of his more famous kinsman, and the
song has not so rich a variety. Although both
birds are ashen gray, the Catbird is slightly
darker and its markings are easily distinguished
— a black cap, and a patch of chestnut under the
tail; no white feathers anywhere.
He is of a prankish, playful disposition, and
so tame as to enliven the very dooryard. As a
devourer of cutworms and other insect pests he
is unsurpassed. Before cherries and berries are
ripe he has well earned his share of them; and
who would be so niggardly as to grudge what he
takes?
INDIGO BUNTING
127
INDIGO BUNTING
This is the bluest of things blue, I do believe,
in all the country, — like a drop precipitated by
the delicate azure that is held in solution by the
summer air. Blue we see in the velvety skies of
the region ; it hangs like a veil of flame — the
thin violet flame of certain gases — over the
sides of mountains and is reflected in the river;
it is accented by bluebells, blue phlox, tradescan-
tia, and bluets; in this bird it flashes fire! — a
color deep as a tur-
quoise, burnished like a
sapphire, dusky on the
wing feathers and dark-
ening to indigo only on
the head.
As is usual among
species of splendid plu-
mage, the female aspires
to none of this physical
glory, choosing rather the safety of the eggs and
nestlings, which her Sparrow-like coloration
helps to conceal. The pretty cup-shaped nest is
generally set in the crotch of a bush, and is com-
pactly made of grasses, dead leaves, and strips
of bark, lined with hairs and softer vegetable
fibres.
The Indigo Bird's song is a cheery warble
INDIGO BUNTING
Length 5^ inches
128
OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
that seems to bubble up from the gladdest of
hearts, expressing the very spirit of a summer
morning. It is one of the last songs to be
silenced by the oncoming heat and the molting
season, being heard until well into August.
The Painted Bunting or Nonpareil is perhaps
the most gorgeously colored bird found in the
United States. So
many colors, so brightly
laid on, has he, that he
seems exotic, as if only
a visitor from the trop-
ics where he makes his
winter home. He is
not so common any-
where as the Indigo
Bunting, and his range
is restricted, so that we
may almost claim him
as a native of the South
Atlantic, and Middle
Southern States alone. His song is not equal
to that of the Indigo Bird, and he is of a more
retiring disposition, so that in spite of his vivid
colors he is a stranger to most people.
CHIMNEY SWIFT
Perhaps because of its fine long wings, this
species is often spoken of as Chimney Swallow,
PAINTED BUNTING
Length 5% inches
CHIMNEY SWIFT
129
though it is more nearly related to the Whip-
poorwills, Nighthawks, and Humming Birds than
to the Swallows. Before the advent of the white
man, these birds built their nests in hollow trees ;
but since the country was settled they have gen-
erally come to prefer and adopt unusued chim-
neys as a dwelling-place. An old factory chim-
ney may shelter hundreds.
The Chimney Swift's
feet, like those of the Whip-
poorwill, are too small and
w r eak to get about on, and
only suffice for perching and
clinging. In ascending the
inside of a chimney they
cling with sharp claws to
the wall and hitch upward
little by little, bracing them-
selves by the stiff spines
with which the tail feathers are pointed. The
wings, having been developed at the expense
of the feet, are powerfully and beautifully made,
and once the top of the chimney is reached the
bird sets forth in air, with free and rapid mo-
tions, to catch insects on the wing.
The nest is semi-circular, made of twigs glued
together and cemented to the wall by the bird's
saliva. It is a cliff -dwelling bird of similar
architectural ideas which furnishes the famous
CHIMNEY SWIFT
Length 5% inches
130 OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
bird-nest soup, agreeable to the palates of. the
Chinese.
RUBYTHROAT HUMMING BIRD
Tiniest of all, a saucy Tom Thumb among the
birds, is this flying jewel, whose size, chirp, and
humming flight are more like those of an in-
sect than of a bird. Vibrant with energy and
strangely fearless, a pair of these wee creatures
will dart out to attack any creature that ap-
proaches their nest, whatever the trespasser's
size; in fact, the males enjoy fighting, and whirl-
ing in sudden squeaking quarrels round the hon-
eyed trumpets of the woodbine. Red blossoms
are their choice, though they will visit others.
The popular idea of these fairylike bits of beauty
is that they subsist daintily on the nectar of
flowers alone; but this concentrated sweet is not
sufficient to maintain such highly keyed vitality;
they consume numbers of small spiders and other
insects.
It is the male who displays the ruby throat;
but the female is pretty enough, in metallic
lustres of green with glints of gold.
The nest is about the size, shape, and con-
sistency of a ball of crochet silk, being delicately
woven of soft fibres, lined with plant down (a
favorite material for this is the yellowish wool
from stems of cinnamon fern), and covered with
HUMMING BIRD
131
gray flakes of lichen, the whole bound together
with cobweb and other threads from insect spin-
dles. So naturtdly does this fairy domicile sit
saddled on its gray-barked support as to be all
but unnoticeable, not to say invisible. Seen from
HUMMING BIRD
Length 3% inches
below, it looks exactly like a small knot on the
limb; and a lady who once looked over my col-
lection of empty nests even remarked that it
was strange the lichen should grow so much
thicker on the nest than on the bark!
Two white eggs scarcely larger than peas
132 OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
occupy this dainty cradle. Fourteen days' incu-
bation is sufficient to hatch the tiny twins, who
are fed by regurgitation — a murderous-looking
process, since nearly the whole length of the par-
ent bird's beak is thrust down the young one's
throat, and given a violent pumping motion; but
the youngsters enjoy it.
The Eubythroat has a peculiar way of frol-
icking or dancing in the air by flying rapidly to
and fro in a 30-foot semicircle, as if swinging
on the end of a thread. At each conclusion of
this arc, before turning, he pauses for an excited
twitter. This sort of " spree" is declared by
some ornithologists to result from indulgence
in the sweet sun-fermented juices that flow from
Sapsucker borings in birch trees. I have never
caught him drinking sap myself, but this pendu-
lum-like swing has been performed before my
eyes more than once, and always in the same
wildly joyous fashion.
WHIPPOORWILL
Only after sunset does this bird open its
large, dark, peculiarly lidded eyes and steal forth
from the dense woods or thicket where it has
slept all day. The dusk is full of insects, and
flying low among them, it soon catches a supper
on the wing. The wide mouth is adapted for
this work, like the rim of a butterfly-net, and the
WHIPPOORWILL
133
long sensitive hairs with which it is set appear
to serve the same purpose as the whiskers of a
cat.
But stopping now and then to sit lengthwise
of a limb, a fence-rail by a clearing, or even the
ridgepole of some lonely cabin, it sends forth the
quiver and lash, quiver and lash, quiver and lash
of its thong-like note — a silvery-sweet if melan-
choly nocturne that ac-
cords well with the
beauty and mystery of
the summer night. Be-
fore dawn, when the
leaves and flowers are
still asleep in the dew,
he sings again.
The Whippoorwill
makes no nes,t, but in
May lays two eggs on
the bare ground in
woods or thickets. They are beautiful as jewels,
pearly white with a few delicate markings of
lilac and brown.
There is a larger bird called Chuckwill's
Widow, whose cry, being slowly uttered at inter-
vals of several seconds, has an even more lonely
and weird effect than the more familiar hurrying
Whippoorwill call. A little boy once gave me
as the wording of this variation, "Chip out o ?
WHIPPOORWILL
Length 9% inches
134
OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
NIGHTHAWK 135
whiteoak — chip out o' whiteoak," which I think
more accurate than the commonly accepted
ChuckwilPs Widow. The mouth of this bird is
enormous, gaping about two inches across from
corner to corner, so that the largest night-moths
and even small birds may be eaten. If one
extends a hand gently to pick up this queer crea-
ture, it is apt to rely on its protective coloring
for safety and, I verily believe, on a certain re-
semblance to a snake; for instead of making a
wild struggle to escape it merely shuffles sidewise
a little, and opens its mouth to emit a hissing
noise and a disgusting odor.
Both birds are peculiar in the shape of the
large dark eyes, in velvety, rotten-wood, mottled
grayish brown colors, and in having wings devel-
oped at the expense of the feet. They can cling
to a perch, but the walk is a clumsy shuffle.
NIGHTHAWK
"Bullbats" we commonly call them, as we
look up at sunset to watch them flying over, not
too high' to be identified by the white spot on
each of those long, swift, oar-like wings. "Peent,
peent," they cry, then suddenly dive through the
air and turn, making a hollow, booming sound
by means of the large wing-feathers.
Above the river where insects abound, above
the woods and fields, even above the city streets
136 OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
they course to and fro, zigzagging as bats do in
pursuit of food on the wing. From May 1st to
late September they flit overhead at night, and
sleep by day perched lengthwise on a limb, where
their beautifully mottled velvety brown and gray
NIGHTHAWK
Length 10 inches
coloring renders them almost invisible. They
spend the winter in South America.
Like the Whippoorwill, Nighthawks build no
nest, but lay two white eggs on the bare ground.
EEDWINGED BLACKBIRD
In marshy places around lakes and ponds, or
where some meandering stream spreads out into
REDWINGED BLACKBIRD
137
an alder thicket, the Bedwings are found in
numbers during the
nesting
season. It is only-
wears bright scarlet
the black-coated male who
epaulets; the young birds and the females, who
during the winter and in migration flock by
themselves, are
brown with darker
streaks, marked
something like a
Sparrow.
The rich call-note
i s described a s
1 i kong - que - ree ' ' or
u Oh lee." There
is also a fifing chorus
which the males sing
all together, which,
while not musical,
makes as springlike
a sound as the rip-
pling of Pickering
frogs.
The nest, if in
alder thickets, is
placed in a crotch of a bush; but if in reedy
marshes it is supported by lacing several stems
together. It is made of coarse grasses and weed
stalks, lined with finer fibres. The eggs are pale
blue, curiously black-streaked and spotted.
REDWINGED BLACKBIRD
Length 9% inches
138
OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
PURPLE MARTIN
Have you ever seen martin-gourds swinging
by twos and fours from the top of a pole, in some
homelike nook where "bee-gums"- stand in the
corners of an old rail-fence among honeysuckles
and yellow Scotch roses? Pleasant company
they make for summer days, darting about over-
head with a loud rolling twitter, not even taking
shelter from a shower
that drives all other
birds inside, taking
the rain on their long
strong wings in the
best of voice and spir-
its ; pleasant company,
worth all the gourds
and box-houses we can
put up for them.
They live by prefer-
ence in colonies, hence
a real martin-box
should be a double-
tenement affair or a small hotel, having several
compartments and entrances. It should be
mounted on a bare pole in an open space, never
in a tree; and should not be put up until the
time of the Martin's arrival from South America
in early April, — unless you wish the trouble of
PURPLE MARTIN
Length 7% inches
KINGBIRD 139
dispossessing whole families of English Spar-
rows to make room for the later comer.
Other Swallows who make their summer
homes with us are the Barn Swallow, who plas-
ters his mud nest under
the eaves and lines it with
chicken feathers; the Bank
Swallow, whose home is in
a hole in some sandy bank
near running water; and
the Rough - winged Swal-
low, who darts and wheels bank swallow
above the treetops in pur- Length 5^ inches
suit of insects. All are good architects, and all
have the slim canoe-like build and arrowy wings
of the Swallow type.
KINGBIRD
Perhaps you know him better by the name
of Bee-Martin; and perhaps you have heard tales
of his quarrelsome and overbearing disposition
and his prowess in driving away other birds.
While he seems to have a grudge against Crows,
those well-known plunderers, and while he is not
afraid to tackle even a large Hawk, it is now the
opinion of good observers that popular accounts
of the Kingbird's tyranny have been much exag"
gerated. Of course any bird, even the peaceful
little Vireo, will defend its nest with spirit.
140
OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
The male Kingbird is usually seen sitting or
rather standing very erect on a dead twig or
other perch having an unobstructed outlook, on
the watch, Flycatcher fashion, for passing in-
sects. While his mate is sitting on her eggs he
takes a position not far away, and is very affec-
tionate and attentive to
her, guarding the nest
while she goes out to seek
food, and singing a few
pleasing notes to her be-
fore daybreak. When the
young make their way out
of the brown-spotted eggs,
he becomes a devoted
father, untiring in the
labor of catching insects
for them.
Does he, or does he
not, earn his nickname of
Bee-Martin by eating
honeybees? Some bee-
keepers have told me that he sits on a perch near
the hive on purpose, and seizes the little workers
as they fly out and in. But certain ornithologists
w x ho have taken pains to dissect the bodies of
various species of birds and determine what was
actually in the crops, declare that the Kingbird
does not eat worker bees, who have stings, but
KINGBIRD
Length 8% inches
BLUE-GRAY GNATCATCHER
141
pick up only drones, who are stingless and at
the approach of winter are destined to be killed
anyway.
There are blank pages on which to record your
own observations about this point.
BLUE-GRAY GNATCATCHER
This pretty little fellow seems to me like a
miniature Catbird in appearance and motions.
The song, too, is like tiny Catbird music, but
faint and squeaky, in-
terspersed with a call-
note like the tank of a
broken fiddle-string.
It is a delight to
watch the pair at
work on their nest,
with a great deal of
flitting and fussing
and frequent enthusi-
astic bursts of song.
Fine strips of bark, tendrils, and grasses are
woven into a deep symmetrical cup, which is
covered outside with lichens that blend it exactly
with the bark, and bound with spider web and
other insect silk, making on the whole the very
prettiest nest I know of in all the woods. Four
or five speckled bluish eggs are laid.
BLUE -GRAY GNATCATCHER
Length 4% inches
142
OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
ORCHARD ORIOLE
Black and chestnut are his colors, but hand-
some as he is it is by his voice that we remember
and recognize him
on his return to the
orchard or the
shade trees of the
lawn. In first one
tree and then an-
other it bubbles
forth, a rich war-
ORCHARD ORIOLE
Length 7 1 ,4 inches
bling carol easily dis-
tinguishable even
among the full spring
chorus.
His nest, while not so
deeply swung as that of
his more famous cousin,
is noticeably well woven
of the choicest material,
and firmly set in the crotch of a limb.
The range of the beautiful Baltimore Oriole
is more generally Northern, but nests are occa-
BALTIMORE ORIOLE
Length 7% inches
YELLOW-BILLED CUCKOO 143
sionally found as far south as Georgia. Its color
is splendid, as if brought from the tropical jun-
gle, rich orange, with black wings and tail. The
nest is one of the most remarkable in the bird
world — a deep pouch-like hammock woven of
vines, stems, strings, and grass, swung from a
bough, the entrance being in the side. The song
is even sweeter and richer than that of the
Orchard Oriole.
YELLOW-BILLED CUCKOO
No drawing that I have seen gives a true idea
of the grace and beauty of this well-known bird,
which is, however, much more often heard than
seen. Its long, slender "streamlines" are built
for silent gliding through the treetops. The
general color is a dusky olive brown, and the
whole breast and underparts are of that color
which in birds we call white, but which is really
a lustrous pearly tint impossible to reproduce in
paint. On each wing is a concealed beauty-patch
of bronze or rufous, seen only as the larger
feathers are spread to reveal its dull glow. The
long tail feathers are tipped with white, showing
from beneath like a series of thumb prints. The
foot is peculiar in having two toes pointing for-
ward and two back; a short, stout member, able
to take a strong clutch on twigs and branches.
Eaincrow we call him, when on summer days
144 OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
we hear "c,c,c,c,cow! cow! cow!" from a lone
tree or from the edge of the woods. From its
rhythm the cry has been compared to the distant
whetting of a scythe, though it is not in the least
a metallic sound.
Solitary in habit and shy in disposition, the
Cuckoos are known by voice, rather than by
sight, over most of the Eastern United States.
The Black-billed Cuckoo is common over the
more northern part of its range; the Yellow-
billed is the commoner Southern bird. Their
habits are very similar.
Neither is a good nest-builder, though none of
our American Cuckoos ever becomes so lazy as
to leave its egg in the home of another bird to be
hatched and reared, like the European species.
The nest is little more than a shabby platform
of loosely laid sticks in a low tree or bush, soft-
ened by grasses and dry oak tassels, but so
thinly that the three to five pale greenish blue
eggs may sometimes be seen through it from
below. The eggs are not always laid at regular
periods, one each day as is usual among birds.
Intervals of some days sometimes elapse, thus
frequently causing the nest to contain young
birds and fresh eggs at the same time. The eggs
of the Black-billed Cuckoo are rather smaller and
darker than those of the other species.
This is one of our most useful birds in the
YELLOW-BILLED CUCKOO
145
YELLOW-BILLED CUCKOO
Length 12% inches
146 OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
checking of insect pests. The Cuckoo devours
great numbers of tent-caterpillars, a creature few
other birds will touch. If you will look close at
the great gray webs these insects spin to wrap
themselves, you will often find them punctured
again and again by this bird's beak. It has been
estimated that a single Cuckoo consumes from.
50 to 400 caterpillars daily. Anyone who has
seen the trees stripped by these insects will ap-
preciate the protection that Cuckoos afford to
green growth. They frequent open wood lands
or the borders of woods and sometimes come into
orchards and gardens, where they are more than
welcome. But they are never conspicuous around
our homes, because of their habits of concealing
themselves among the foliage, and of keeping
perfectly quiet when the least alarmed.
Young Cuckoos are the funniest, ugliest little
creatures imaginable when first hatched. Their
black skin is almost naked, and their mouths
open bright red. The growing feathers remain
in pencil-like sheaths until fully developed, so
that their bodies appear to be encased in a curi-
ous mail of hedgehog-like quills. Young King-
fishers also present this singular appearance.
The constant feeding on hundreds of insects
daily has its effect; sooner or later the little
black bodies fill out, the day comes when the
feathers split their sheaths all at once, and
CHIPPING SPARROW 14T
within a few hours the nest is filled with birds
daintily clothed in dusky bronze and white, ready
to make their first short flight into their treetop
world. This striking transformation is one of
the interesting features of Cuckoo life.
Another strange characteristic is their way
of traveling at night during migration. They
arrive in our latitude about the first of May, and
leave at the end of September to spend the win-
ter in South America.
CHIPPING SPAEROW
The Doorstep Sparrow is John Burroughs
name for this gentle, cheerful little chap, and a
better could hardly be found. Of the many spe-
cies of Sparrows round our homes in the coun-
try, this is the only one who is a summer mi-
grant, and he so frequently winters with us as
almost to be written as a permanent resident.
He is smaller in size than the English Sparrow
and has no mind for fighting, so that he is no
longer to be found in suburbs and thickly settled
places, where the larger, bullying Sparrow is in
possession of all available nesting places before
Chippy's return in the spring.
He may be readily known in summer by his
rufous or rust-colored cap, and by the white line
over the eye. In winter this bay cap is changed
for a streaked one, and the Chippies flock to the
148
OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
fields to live upon weed and grass seeds. The
call-note is a soft chip, the song a rapid "chippy-
chippy, chippy-chippy ' ' long continued, like an
insect's buzzing, not musical at all; but the
CHIPPING SPARROW
Length 5% inches
friendliness of Chippy's disposition atones for
his lack as a songster; he needs no special talent
to endear him to us all.
The nest is of grass and rootlets and other
fibres, lined with horsehair. The four or five
speckled eggs are laid about the first of May,
YELLOW-BREASTED CHAT 149
but a second or even a third brood are some-
times raised.
YELLOW-BREASTED CHAT
This is the largest and by far the noisiest of
the Warblers. Except for his green and olive
coloring he does not seem like a Warbler at all.
His beak and legs are thick and stout, colored
lead-gray; his voice is rather loud, and sounds as
if he were scolding or harshly criticising some-
body or something in the woods. "Woit? cheep
— chuck; whee-whee-whee-whee — " and so on
with any kind of whistle or squawk, never by
any chance achieving a musical tone, but in such
variety that he is sometimes given the name of
Polyglot Chat and credited with imitation and
ventriloquism. He must certainly enjoy these
singular vocal efforts, since he often wakes up
oq April and May nights to repeat them.
His haunts are brushy hillsides and copses, or
thickets in partial clearings; but he occasionally
comes into an open space to perform a weird
clown's dance in the air, twitching and jerking
and somersaulting with dangling legs. But if he
catches you watching him he disappears at once
in the underbrush, and scolds nervously as long
as you remain in sight.
150
OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
YELLOW-BREASTED CHAT
Length 7% inches
YELLOW WARBLER
151
YELLOW WARBLER
The Wood Warblers are a large family, and
exclusively American. They have been called the
"most numerous, most beautiful and least
YELLOW WARBLER
Length 5 inches
known' ' birds of North America. Few of them
really "warble"; their value is in their various
and delicate beauty, and in the fact that they
feed almost entirely upon small insects which
larger birds overlook. The best time to observe
152
OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
PALM WARBLER
Length 5% inches
them is during the spring migration, when they
travel through the Southeastern states in strag-
gling flocks made up of several species, flitting
through woods and orchards from tree to tree — ■
such tiny wings to pass,
even by stages, the thou-
sands of miles that some-
times lie between their
summer and winter homes.
At this time they may be
seen in the trees of lawns
and dooryards, but later in
the season they retire to the
woods pretty generally.
The Yellow Warbler is
an exception, preferring orchard trees, brushy
brooks, and quiet gardens, where he is frequently
mistaken for an escaped Canary, though his only
song is a happy "wee-
chee, chee, chee, che wee."
The nest of this live
sunbeam is made of fine
grass and fibres lined with
thistledown; the eggs are
thickly speckled.
This one, and the Palm and Prairie Warblers,
are three "wood" warblers that are rarely found
in the woods. The Prairie Warbler frequents
bushy clearings, or old fields grown up in young
PRAIRIE WARBLER
Length 4% inches
BLACK AND WHITE CREEPING WARBLER 153
pines. It is one of the commonest of Southern
Warblers.
BLACK AND WHITE CREEPING
WARBLER
Warblers seek their food in a variety of ways,
some flitting through the green boughs and
gleaning from twigs and leaves, some spending
most of their time on or near the
ground, others capturing insects
on the wing like Flycatchers. The
Black-and- White Creeping War-
bler gleans over the bark in
the fashion
of
BLACK AND WHITE
CREEPING WARBLER
Length 5^4 inches
a Nuthatch or a
Creeper, but is
more restless
and active, ex-
ploring every
crevice, slipping
round and round
the tree and
one of the first
and one of the
over the larger boughs. It is
Warblers to arrive in spring,
commonest and best known representatives of
the family, the black and white stripes being
easy to remember.
The song is something like the scraping of a
corn stalk fiddle — feedle-deedle-deedle-dee. Al-
though this Warbler seeks its living in trees, the
154 OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
HOODED WARBLER
Length 5 y 2 inches
HOODED WARBLER 155
nest is on the ground, beside a stump or log or
under a rock.
HOODED WARBLER
His funny little song, usually described as
"You must come' to the woods' or you won't see
me," sounds to me more like "Che-wee, che-wee,
che-wee, why it's you!" but every ear finds, no
doubt, a different interpretation of such a hur-
ried jingle.
I have watched him go over a whole budding
maple, whose glutinous juices attracted a horde
of small dancing insects, from time to time
uttering this song between bites, and seizing
whatever came in his way. Sometimes he darted
out to catch a mouthful on the wing, and each
time I heard the snap of his tiny beak, as of a
bit of chalk broken. He is very oddly marked
with what looks like a black skating helmet
pulled over his bright yellow head.
TENNESSEE WARBLER
This rather colorless Warbler is surely mis-
named, since it is as common in several other
States as in Tennessee, and is not more numer-
ous there than, for instance, the Prairie Warbler.
Its color is olive green on the back, with bluish
gray head; the breast is white; there is a white
line over the eye. The nest is made of fine vege-
156
OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
table fibres and moss, lined with hair, in low
bushes near the ground.
TENNESSEE WARBLER
Length 5 inches
The Nashville Warbler may he distinguished
from the preceding by its brighter colors. The
breast is bright yellow; there is no line over the
eye, but a faint chestnut
patch on the crown. It
frequents open woods or
tree-bordered fields and
clearings. The nest is on
the ground, usually hid-
den under a rock or a
NASHVILLE WARBLER -. „ 1
Length 4 % inches clump of leaves.
MARYLAND YELLOWTHROAT 157
A much rarer species which is found on or
near the ground is the Worm-eating Warbler. It
may be known by the buff-yellow, black-striped
head.
MARYLAND YELLOWTHROAT
Length 5^4 inches
MARYLAND YELLOWTHROAT
Very similar in some ways and in coloring
to the Kentucky Warbler is this black-masked
beauty. Both birds make their homes in green
thickets and tangles, but both are curious enough
to drop from bough to bough and come quite
158
OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
close to you if you will keep still, peering at
you with bright eyes and chirping inquiringly.
The Yellowthr oat's
"witchity witchity witch-
ity" is quite a distinctive
note, not easily confused
with that of any other
bird.
PAEULA WAEBLER
The Warbler colors
are, generally speaking,
bright yellow, slate gray,
chestnut, black and white,
and olive. Sometimes
nearly all of these are
laid on the feathers of a single bird, as in the
tiny Parula. The southern species is at home
in bayous and swamps where the long tillandsia
moss, drooping in gray
webs from the trees,
forms the most conveni-
ent of hiding places for
the almost weightless lit-
tle nest.
The Northern variety blackburnian warbler
is said to be brighter Lengrth 5% inches
colored. Both occasionally winter on the Gulf
Coast.
PARULA WARBLER
Length 4% inches
LOUISIANA WATER THRUSH 159
A still more brilliant example of Warbler
beauty is the Blackburnian, which, while never a
common bird in any region, may be found nest-
ing in the Alleghenies as far south as Georgia.
So also does the Black-throated Green Warbler.
Both follow the coniferous forests north and
south, preferring them for nesting and feeding
grounds.
Other prettily colored Warblers are the Blue-
winged and the Golden-winged, both of whom
nest on the ground but are sometimes seen feed-
ing in trees and bushes ; and the black and yellow
Bachman's Warbler, who is rare and local in dis-
tribution and seldom seen.
LOUISIANA WATER THRUSH
This shy, colorless Warbler of the wild sweet
song chooses for its home the most romantic of
sites. By a woodland brook that flashes white
and gurgles over mossy boulders, or a mountain
troutstream, or where some quieter creek steals
between the roots of giant trees in the valley,
the nest is hidden under a ledge, a bank, or the
up-wrenched roots of a fallen tree. In such a
green cavern, if you keep very still, you may
catch a glimpse of the Water Thrush — a shadow
among shadows, ivalking, springing from boulder
to boulder across the stream, or darting through
the laurel.
160
OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
The instant he sees you he is gone, to watch
you from a distant log or low bush until you
leave. He is always in nervous motion, con-
stantly tilting and weaving his body, so that he
has been sometimes called
the Water Wagtail.
PROTHONOTARY
WARBLER
Boys who paddle about
in canoes or pirogues are
likely to see this exquisite
bird at home, its deep
golden head and neck
gleaming like a flower
from the dense shadows
of trees that overhang
the water. Its nest is
made by partly filling a
hollow stub with moss,
leaves, and grasses, and hollowing out the top of
the moss to receive the five or six speckled eggs.
A dead tree leaning over a stream or pond shore
may contain several nests of this bird, with those
of the Chickadee and the Downy Woodpecker at
the same time, though the last two do not show
the same preference for willow trees and water.
In the marshes of Georgia, and less commonly
throughout the South in cane brakes and green
LOUISIANA
WATER THRUSH
Length 6^ inches
PROTHONOTARY WARBLER
161
tangles by the water, is found a Warbler whose
song outshines the plumage of gay-colored spe-
cies — Swainson's, so little known that he is left
out of many bird lists altogether. In contrast
PROTHONOTARY WARBLER
Length 5% inches
to the Black and White Warbler who lives in
trees and nests on the ground, Swainson's War-
bler lives on or near the ground and makes its
nest in bushes, canes, or palmettos, several feet
above the ground or the water.
162
OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
Another pretty inhabitant of swamps, bayous,
and wet thickets is the Yellowthroated Warbler,
one of the smallest of all. It is vividly striped
with black and white on the sides, and may be
known by the bib-plastron of bright yellow on
the throat and breast. The Sycamore Warbler
is similarly marked, an inhabitant of heavily
wooded bottom lands.
OVENBIRD
His speckled breast makes him look like a
little Thrush, but when he begins to walk, lifting
one white-stockinged leg after
the other so daintily, none can
mistake him. The spring note
is also unmistakable. Mr.
Burroughs has so aptly de-
scribed it as "teacker-teacher-
Teachee-TEACHER-T^M Off-
icii!/' that this wording is
J^> generally recognized by all
ovenbird bird students in connection
Length 6 inches with the YQ ^
Why Ovenbird? you may wonder until you
see the nest, roofed and rounded over like an
old-fashioned oven or kiln, with the entrance at
the side. A big structure for so small an archi-
tect, but so nearly invisible that in order to find
it you must pursue the tactics of children who
CAIRN'S WARBLER
163
search for guinea's eggs, possessing your soul in
patience — and in hiding — till you see the little
hen slip into it.
The Ovenbird has another song, finer and
sweeter than most Warbler strains, but seems
rarely inspired to utter it, even in the nesting
season.
CAIRN'S WARBLER
Length sy^ inches
CAIRN'S WARBLER
This Warbler is nearly similar to the Black-
throated Blue (which is not blue, but blue-gray
or slate color) of more northern range, the prin-
164 OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
cipal difference being that Cairn's has black
spots on the back. The female is of very differ-
ent feather, dull olive, and apt to puzzle the
observer; but like the male she has a distinct
white spot in the middle of the wing that serves
as a mark of identification.
This is a true Wood Warbler, and hunts its
food among the thickest of greenery, building its
nest in a dense bush near the ground.
CHESTNUT-SIDED WARBLER
Like the Golden-winged and the Black-
throated Green Warblers, this restless little
Warbler dwells among us only by caprice, and
then chiefly among the mountains or in wooded
hills. He nests in the bushes and undergrowth,
keeping himself and his family pretty well hid-
den after a short visit to our orchards and gar-
dens, immediately after his arrival in the May
migration. We may see him either on the ground
picking up ants, or in the green thicket of leaves
in pursuit of worms and small insects : a very
bright and lively fellow, with nearly all the
Warbler colors patched together in his coat,
though it is the chestnut side streaks, sometimes
spoken of as "bloody," that give him his name.
The song has been cleverly suggested by the
syllables, "I wish I wish I wish to see Miss
Beecher."
KENTUCKY WARBLER
165
KENTUCKY WARBLER
Though not strictly a ground Warbler, pre-
ferring to glean along Jmery fence rows and in
brushy thickets, this bright little fellow like
^/J'/Vf/i
KENTUCKY WARBLER
Length 5% inches
many ground Warblers walks instead of hopping.
He is nearly as well known by his song as by
his yellow breast; it is a loud clear whistle,
reminding the listener of certain notes of the
Carolina Wren, and persistently repeated.
166 OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
The nest is rather bulky for so small a
builder, hidden on the ground, made of leaves
and strips of bark, and lined with fine fibres and
horsehair ; there are four or five pretty speckled
eggs.
Mr. James Lane Allen, whose understanding
of the wild creatures of his native State is
equaled by his knowledge of beautiful English,
has given the name of The Kentucky "Warbler
to one of his books. Of the bird itself he says :
"For over a hundred years the Kentucky
Warbler has worn the name of the State and has
carried it all over the world — leading the stu-
dents of bird life to form some image of a far
country and to fix their thoughts at least for
some brief moment on this beautiful spot of the
earth's surface. As long as he remains in the
forests of the earth, he will keep the name of
Kentucky alive, though all else it once meant
shall have perished and been forgotten. He is
thus, as nearly as anything in nature can be,
its winged world-wide emblem, ever young as
each spring is young, as the green of the woods
is young.
"Study the warbler while you may; how long
he will inhabit the Kentucky forest no one can
tell. As civilization advances upon the forest,
the wild species retreat; when the forest falls,
the wild species are gone — The distant time may
PINE WARBLER
167
come, or a nearer, when the Kentucky warbler
will have vanished like the wild pigeon ; then any
story of him will be as one of the ancient fables
of bird life."
PINE WARBLER
This tiny olive-backed, yellow-breasted War-
bler not only spends the winter in the middle
Southern and Gulf states, but sings his soft,
musical if rather monoto-
nous trill on pleasant
days throughout the year.
As the name implies, he
is found in pineries, and
builds his nest in pine
trees. His song is a trill
suggesting that of the
Chipping Sparrow, but
sweeter in tone.
After the nesting season is over, Pine War-
blers, being like most Warblers quite friendly
with other species, are sometimes found in com-
pany with a few Yellow Palm and Myrtle War-
blers. The last named is hardy enough to winter
with us occasionally; but the Yellow Palm War-
bler is a familiar sight in fields and roadsides,
and even in the streets of Southern towns, during
the months when most of these bright little fel-
lows are away in the West Indies, Mexico, and
PINE WARBLER
Length 5% inches
168 OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
South America. He even comes into porches
like the Chippy Sparrow. So fidgety and rest-
less are his motions as to earn for him the name
of Wagtail.
Those mentioned are only a part of the "War-
blers to be found in our woods, marshes, and
fields ; to enumerate them all would be confusing
within the limits of a non-scientific book. There
are some fifty-odd Warblers in the eastern por-
tion of the United States, and nearly all of them
are to be seen in the Southern States at one
time or another, especially during migration.
Concerning many of them little Las been learned
as yet. They are highly various and interesting,
and well repay the closest and most earnest
study.
SHADOWS FROM THE PAST
CAROLINA PAROQUET
How many children who enjoy feeding Polly
on her perch and hearing her ludicrous imita-
tions of the talk and other sounds around her,
ever dream that there is a wild Parrot numbered
among our native birds? Not so accomplished a
linguist, but quite as brightly colored and curi-
ously formed, is this pretty Poll of the woods
whom so few of us have ever seen: its head and
neck being yellow and orange, and the rest of its
plumage green.
This Paroquet was once an abundant bird
throughout the Southern States. How it would
delight us today to see a pair of them, about
as large as a Dove, clambering parrot-fashion
among the branches of our trees; or to be
allowed a peep at two white eggs in a Paroquet
nest! But that is not to be. In order to find
one of these birds today it would be necessary
to search thoroughly the remotest and loneliest
counties of Florida, where the rarer wild species
are making their last stand in the struggle for
existence, in dense "hammocks" of tropical
growth surrounded and protected by the silence
of the Everglades. Here also the Roseate Spoon^
169
170 OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
bill, the Flamingo, the egrets, and the Ivorybilled
Woodpecker spread their beautiful wings yet a
little time unmolested.
Let the disappearance of these winged lives
from their one-time haunts lead us to set a
higher value on those that remain.
PASSENGER PIGEON
Have you not heard old people tell of the
great flocks of Wild or Passenger Pigeons that
used to bridge the sky like a summer cloud?
This bird, once so abundant in this country that
w r hole boatloads of the bodies were sold in New r
York markets at one cent apiece, is now but a
memory, like the American Buffalo w r hose once
innumerable herds have vanished from our plains.
No wings of the earth were swifter, stronger,
and more graceful than those of this Pigeon in
flight. It was larger by several inches than the
Mourning Dove, and more erect and active. Its
colors were brighter and its whole habit and
bearing more energetic.
James Lane Allen, who has written so charm-
ingly of the Cardinal and of other Southern
birds, recalls to us as follows this well-nigh for-
gotten glory of our land :
"What Wilson records he saw of bird-life
in Kentucky a hundred years ago reads to us
now as fables of the marvelous, of the incredible
PASSENGER PIGEON 171
Let me tell you that I in my boyhood — half
a century later than Wilson's visit to Kentucky
— beheld things that you will hardly believe.
"The vast oak forest of Kentucky was what
attracted the Passenger Pigeon. In the autumn
when acorns were ripe, but not yet fallen, the
pigeons filled the trees at times and places, eat-
ing them from the cups. Walking quietly some
sunny afternoon through the bluegrass pastures,
you might approach an oak and see nothing but
the tree itself, thick bough with the afternoon
sunlight sparkling on the leaves along one side.
As you drew nearer, all at once, as if some vio-
lent explosion had taken place within the tree,
a blue smoke-like cloud burst out all along the
tree-top — the simultaneous flight of the startled
pigeons. Or all night long there might be wind
and rain and the swishing of boughs and the
tapping of loosened leaves against the window
panes; and when you stepped out of doors next
morning, it had suddenly become clear and cold.
Walking out into the open and looking up at the
clear sky you might see this : an arch of pigeons,
breast by breast, wing-tip to wing-tip, high up
in the air as the wild geese fly, slowly moving
southward. You could not see the end of the
arch on one horizon or the other; the whole
firmament was spanned by that mighty arch of
pigeons flying south from the sudden cold. Not
172 OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
all the forces of nature can restore to Kentucky
that morning sunlit arch of pigeons flying south. \ f
They are forever gone! The laws at that
time gave them no protection, because it was con-
sidered that they were so numerous that the
inroads of man could have no appreciable effect
upon such countless numbers. Wilson, writing
about 1808, estimated that the flock observed by
him near Frankfort contained over two billion
birds, and a nesting colony near Shelbyville in
the same State extended through the woods for
nearly forty miles, the trees being loaded with
nests.
During the next ninety years, the slaughter
of the birds went on unchecked. Pigeons were
netted and shot by thousands and shipped by
carloads and trainloads into the markets, or even
fed to hogs. Hunters, taking their families along
in wagons, camped near the nesting grounds, and
with clubs and fires and sulphur pots killed par-
ents and squabs on the nests. Boys and women
without guns beat the birds down with brushy
poles as they circled about bewildered by the
smoke and shouting. At one nesting place in
Michigan, 500 netters were at work, their catch
averaging 200,000 birds apiece ; at another it was
estimated that fully a billion pigeons were taken.
Suddenly people noticed that Wild Pigeons
were no longer plentiful. The buffalo went "all
PASSENGER PIGEON 173
at once." So "all at once" disappeared the
well-known flocks from their native sky. They
must, it was argued, have become tired of the
yearly disturbance and gone farther into the
unsettled forest to roost and to breed. They
would come back some day. But that is not the
way birds live. Remember that birds do not
change their yearly nesting locations to any
great extent. Their return to the same spot may
be fatal, but return they must and will. A spe-
cies persecuted to disappearance from a given
locality has not moved elsewhere, but is killed
out of that particular region; and if its flocks
be undergoing everywhere a similar extermina-
tion, it means that this species is slowly but
surely vanishing from the face of the earth.
The last recorded nesting of Passenger Pig-
eons occurred in Michigan in 1881. The last
wild specimens of which we have any definite
record were shot (of course!) in 1898. Eight
birds were kept for some years in the Cincinnati
Zoological Park; but they are too free and active
by nature to thrive in captivity, and the last
widowed survivor of the whole race died Sep-
tember 1, 1914.
Rewards of several thousands of dollars have
since been offered without bringing to light a
single living specimen of this superb member of
the Dove family. We can never call back the
174 OUR SOUTHERN BIRDS
pigeon or the buffalo. But it is not too late to
learn from the mistakes of our fathers, and
though we have lost some valuable species, we
may yet save others that are following these to
extinction.
Note to Teacher
The student should have a careful training on
on the points of observation according to the
directions given in the Introduction, pages 5 and
6. If possible procure at least one good field
glass for the use of the school. Careful obser-
vations should be made and notes written imme-
diately. Even without the use of the field glass
any sharp-eyed boy or girl can readily make
most of these observations. After your notes
are arranged in the best possible way, the most
important of them should be written in ink as
permanent records on the following blank pages.
In addition, it is advisable that the pupil pro-
cure a suitable note-book for a permanent record
of all birds observed. Furthermore it is impor-
tant that there be discussions by the class of
such questions as :
Why Birds Should Be Protected; How We-
May Protect the Birds; What We Can Do to
Attract Birds about Our Homes.
A society for the study and protection of
birds may be arranged.
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